Morality > Truth?

[The6thMessenger]

You can have your own intrests and values, they just aren't on a moral high ground. You're only concern about your own interests and intentions. We have a word for that.

Sure, you want the moral high ground? Take it, it's yours, all of you. My concern is not that compassion dealies, but what i value is knowledge, truth, inquiry and stuffs.

So wait, let me get this straight.. you aren't interested in morality because it doesn't fufill your own interests?

Yes and no. If it's not in the way of my own interest, then i care.

So you're saying that being moral doesn't make you happy? I mean, being moral is for the benefit and happiness of everyone else. You're not interested in morality because it just doesn't satisfy you (like asked earlier)?

Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. But rather it's not in my top priority.

How is this relevant.

How is THIS relevant? If you looked at the first post, the threat title; Morality > Truth?, why is this suddenly about me not having morality in terms of compassion suddenly the topic.

[brimstoneSalad]

Am I not allowed to have my own interests and values?

You're pulling them out of your ass. You can have your own "values", but in so far as they are hedonistic they mean as much as the run of the Mill pedophile's desire to diddle children, and in so far as they pretend to be anything more they mean as much as those of the Jihadists, because they are NOT based on logic and reason, but arbitrary dogmas.
Your values are as legitimate as those of ISIS, except you have less of an excuse to hold them than they do.

I mean all he said seemed to me like he is imposing HIS values onto me.

I'm telling you how it is: This is psychology you moron.
Hedonism is not satisfying. Those who are most satisfied in life aspire to greater values -- which generally means culturing compassion and helping others.

That's either religious nuts of various flavors who aspire to divine command -- which you may favor.
Social justice warriors who advocate dogma of other kinds with about as much sense as religion, minus the god part -- consider radical feminism!
Or sensible people working toward legitimate and logically consistent secular morality.

These are the kinds of purposes you have to consider valuing if you want something meaningful out of life.
I only mentioned the last one because it's the one I recommend, and I didn't take you as fool enough to favor one of the prior too -- I guess I was wrong and you're dumb enough, so you might as well just find religion or get into hypocritical social justice instead.

Other more limited interests like collecting dolls or amassing random facts will ultimately fall flat as you realize you've been wasting your life on something that has no inherent value.
Knowledge is essential to morality (as is knowing the truth), but it is useless in itself unless you apply it to doing something good.

Like that muslim guy imposing his own culture's value of modesty onto another.

I'm actually making the same arguments Dawkins has made at various times, along with Harris (although a bit more sophisticated).

But fuck you and the ignorant pseudo-philosophy of moral relativism you rode in on. Advocating legitimately caring about the real and scientifically validated interests of other sentient beings is not the same thing as advocating absurd and arbitrary Islamic "cultural" values.
If you're still harping on that "all 'morality' is equal" bullshit you probably should just exit because you're hopeless.

I have tried multiple times to talk reason into you, but you're not having any of it obviously.

I would recommend some painless methods, but that might be pushing the envelope. Figure it out for yourself, but you're clearly too stupid to keep wasting space on this planet if you can't understand the difference between what I'm suggesting and what an Islamic extremist is demanding under threat of violence.

If you want to kill yourself, go for it. All things considered, it would probably be the most decent thing you've ever done in a life of shitty things.

OR you could suck it up, and make an effort at being the kind of person we need in this world, and be happier in the process of becoming a person you know should be happy with herself and that we could all respect.

I mean, does he really know me well enough that not caring for other people makes me miserable? That being a "better" (by his standards as it seems) would make me feel a sense of meaning and fulfillment.

If you're a human being, then yes. Adopting values beyond your personal selfish desires and working for them will make you more happy and fulfilled in life.
You could find a religion and become a religious nut, join the social justice warriors and become a feminist nut (or something else irrational), OR you could adopt legitimate consistent secular moral values (which are not MY standards, but standards of logical consistency -- I did not invent logic and reason).

The thing is that it's HIS values -- it's what makes him happy.

It's human. It's what fulfills human beings, dipshit.
Don't do it if you want to stay miserable. Or do drugs and distract yourself from your misery. Or stay glued to a TV for the rest of your pointless life. Or just OD and go out with a smile and never have to deal with any of it again.
Obviously you're going to do whatever the fuck you want to do, so why are you complaining about my giving you advice?

I'm not holding a gun to your head, I'm just making suggestions based on my superior knowledge and experience with this stuff. The more you give a shit, the more purpose you have in life, the less miserable your own problems will make you and the more you will be loved and respected because you'll actually be seen to deserve it, which will just increase your life satisfaction even more.

I came here for the question: Morality > Truth?, which has been already answered. All of this is already off-topic, and seemingly like a witch-hunt.

It's not as off topic as you think it is. You're advocating the notion that you have meaningful values (like so called "truth") outside a moral context, and you don't, since nothing can be validated outside that context.

Sye Ten is partially right, in that atheism can't substantiate by itself truth in opposition to propositions like hard solipsism or factual relativism. However, religion/theism can't either, since it's just a bald assertion without teeth; you might as well just baldly assert that solipsism is wrong without explanation rather than taking an extra step and baldly asserting a god in addition to that then making a non sequitur. He's offering the wrong solution (a non-solution) to a real problem.

[The6thMessenger]

I already got the answers what i came for. I see no reason to further drag this out.

[Red]

Don't bullshit your way out of this

[The6thMessenger]

Don't bullshit your way out of this

I asked a question, I got an answer. I'm done.

[Red]

Ok. Bye

[EquALLity]

I'm not encouraging her to do either one over the other, am I?

I mean, changing her complacent entitled whiny-brat mindset and actually doing something to make the world a better place would be the best option, obviously.

Well, now you apparently aren't, but it's still pretty horrible.

The situation itself, in general, may be tragic. The fact that a child was raised to adulthood without learning a sense of empathy and compassion for others is itself tragic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2-Re_Fl_L4

Geez, that was a disturbing documentary.

She's fine now though: http://www.oddityworld.net/2014/07/what ... ld-of.html

This kind of stuff is tragic. At least in that case, the intervention was early enough that the girl was mostly saved. With T6M, it may be too late. She shows no interest in being a good person at all, and because of that, it's very difficult to reach her with any argument.

Once you've gone down that road and spoiled a human being beyond repair -- like with violent criminals -- sometimes the best bet is to cut your losses and liquidate whatever is left to start over with fresh human beings.
We shouldn't be killing people against their wills, but if profoundly bad and broken people decide on their own that they don't want to live anymore (which doesn't violate their wills if they do it themselves with full information), that's not such a terrible thing in itself.

You may be more optimistic than I am about T6M's capacity to change, start caring about morality, and become a decent human being.
All I see is a spoiled child turned spoiled adult who is probably irreparably broken and cares for nothing outside of herself, additionally subject to sadistic inclinations on top of her psychopathic tendencies (What did she say about wanting to happen to everybody in ISIS?).

Nobody is 'broken beyond repair'. Everybody is redeemable, because everyone can change.

She said some bad things, but the callous way you're talking to T6M while recommending ways for T6M to commit suicide is also pretty nasty.

Possibility isn't good enough; we need a certain margin of probability.

If there's a 90% chance a person is only going to do harm for a lifetime, and a 10% chance that person will achieve neutrality at best, the betting odds are not on good consequences.

Perhaps, but it's a chance worth taking in any case because therapy can do wonders. Take that girl from the documentary.

"Just stop complaining" isn't exactly a solution, though.

You never know anything fully; with that reasoning we can never act on anything. The important point is that we can assess with a few questions whether somebody is informed or not, and of sound enough mind to give consent.

In the case of somebody like Conrad Roy, obviously he was delusional and thought he was going to go to heaven to be happy. That was not a sound decision. He also needed to try medication out to see if something could be found that would be tolerable to him.

Not only do you not know it fully, you really don't know much at all about this. We barely have any information. All we know is that T6M seems to not care enough about morality (based on the response to my question, T6M does care to an extent).
You can't tell people to end their lives based on that.

Only if you use some kind of circular reasoning and define anybody who doesn't want to live as depressed or delusional. That's not really fair.

There are people of sound mind, without any kind of acute or easily treatable depression, who just do not enjoy life and have no interest in living.

People who have depression that is extremely difficult to treat might be the least sound-minded group of people on the planet.

"There are people of a sound mind, with very severe depression."
...

Give me a situation in which a sound-minded person would commit suicide in the context we are describing (not self-sacrifice).

Search "rational suicide", and keep an open mind.
Here's a pretty good reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/c ... _even_for/

You can't just say something crazy and then add "keep an open mind".

Search "factory farming is actually good for the environment", and keep an open mind.

I did some reading of that link, and it wasn't about sound-minded people. It was about severely depressed people.

[EquALLity]

I would recommend some painless methods, but that might be pushing the envelope. Figure it out for yourself, but you're clearly too stupid to keep wasting space on this planet if you can't understand the difference between what I'm suggesting and what an Islamic extremist is demanding under threat of violence.

If you want to kill yourself, go for it. All things considered, it would probably be the most decent thing you've ever done in a life of shitty things.

OR you could suck it up, and make an effort at being the kind of person we need in this world, and be happier in the process of becoming a person you know should be happy with herself and that we could all respect.

I don't really even know what to say to what you wrote here. It's not even subtle anymore.

While explicitly telling a person to commit suicide, you think it might be pushing the envelope to recommend painless methods? That's where you draw the line?

I'm not saying you should recommend anything by any means, but that's really bizarre.
It's like, "I'll shoot a dog, but I won't shoot a baby, because shooting the baby might be pushing the envelope."


"Figure it out for yourself, but you're clearly too stupid to keep wasting space on this planet if you can't understand the difference between what I'm suggesting and what an Islamic extremist is demanding under threat of violence."

"All things considered, it would probably be the most decent thing you've ever done in a life of shitty things."

How do you make statements like this, while simultaneously condemning T6M for not caring about morality?

What good do you think is going to come out of this? Do you think you're going to convince T6M to be a good person by saying things like that? Aren't you trying to teach compassion? WTF?

[Red]

I do have a bit of an issue with this, but not on the moral level that EquALLity is bringing up. Brimstone, you're saying that the anime dork is being a useless, unproductive slob, which I fully concur with. But you gotta remember she's a teenager. Teenagers rank as some of the least productive people on the planet. As for the nihilism, I'm convinced it's a phase, or just hormones. But that's not the complete issue. You say that the anime dork is not going to amount productive at this rate, and if she wants to kill herself, she should just do it. I feel as though that's even less productive. She's not in the real world yet (as I am), so when she does get out there, that's where she's gotta be productive. No gaurantees though. But if she kills herself, that eliminates the possibility of of her ever being able to accomplish something productive. Wouldn't that be counterproductive? Who knows, maybe as she matures and grows up, she'll be the one advocating morality. I mean, she's still just a kid, she still has a lot of time to accomplish things. I think we should offer a more productive solution, don't you think?

[Cirion Spellbinder]

Nobody is 'broken beyond repair'. Everybody is redeemable, because everyone can change.

Saying that something is worth trying because it can happen is absurd. Everyone can change, but not everyone is likely to change.

How fixable are these people?
• How much time would it require?
• What resources would we need?
• Would these resources and time be better devoted to other issues?
• How effective is saving these people in terms of effective altruism?