@Yogi Way to miss the point. I wasn't comparing cars and guns, I was comparing laws regulating cars and guns. That's all I'm going to say to you. You've already told me in another discussion that you're going to refuse any evidence that doesn't agree with your narrow minded beliefs, so having a discussion with you is pointless.

@RedSky

1) I'm not implying that the US is more violent. I already pointed out that the US has lower violent crime rates than the US and UK despite the higher murder rate.


2) I'd say people in rural areas are most likely own guns for hunting and also self defense as there are no police patrols out in the country.

I also wouldn't blame the availability of guns to criminals on gun enthusiasts. Criminals generally don't legally buy their guns. One way to cut down on illegall gun sales is to charge the sellers as accomplices to the crimes committed with the weapons they sell illegally.


3) Maybe punishment was not the right word I should have chosen. My point is that to cut down on driving fatalities, the laws enacted didn't put any inconveniences on responsible drivers.

Your back of the envelope calculation isn't quite so clear cut. Sam Harris discusses this in his article.

It is also worth noting that relatively gun-free countries are not as peaceful as many think. Here are some recent crime data comparing the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and Sweden. Although the U.S. has a higher rate of homicide, the problem of assaults in these other countries is much worse...

So, while the U.S. has many more murders, the U.K., Australia, and Sweden have much higher levels of assault. One might think that having a few more murders per 100,000 persons each year is still much worse than having many hundreds more assaults. Perhaps it is. (One could also argue, as several readers have, that differences in proportion are all we should care about.) But there should be no doubt that the term “assault” often conceals some extraordinary instances of physical and psychological suffering.

It's possible that the reason the US has lower assault, robbery and rape is that armed citizens are able to defend themselves from such crimes.

I'm seeing a lot of people saying the US should look to the UK and Australia on how to handle gun control. Both UK and Australia already had low murder and violent crime rates at the time of their "bans." After Australia's National Firearms Act and forced gun buyback, homicide fell by 9%, but assault went up 40% and rape went up 20%. In the years before the NFA, homicides had been on a steady decline, and a 2003 study published by the Brookings Institution, found the NFA's impact on homicide was "relatively small."

After the UK's "gun ban" in 1997, gun crime actually increased [1] [2]. Gun crimes in 1997-1998 were 2,648. The Office for National Statistics shows that 5,507 firearm offenses were reported 2011-2012.


4) Yes cars do provide a benefit to society. Their regulation and restrictions are reasonable, and I already said I'm not opposed to any reasonable gun laws. But cars are the leading cause of accidental death each year. There are lots of things that can be done to make cars and drivers safer. Cars could be limited to 70 MPH. The national speed limit on highways is 70 MPH, why do you need a car capable of going faster? Cars can be fitted with a GPS and a "black box" that records your driving activities. Each year when you renew your inspection, the black box data is downloaded and analyzed. If it's discovered you've broken any traffic laws, you will be fined, and if it's determined you aren't a safe driver, your license is revoked. Prohibit personal sales of vehicles between individuals, because you can't know if the person your selling to is a safe driver or if their license is valid (see below about the "gun show exemption"). Sounds crazy, but those aren't nearly as bad as some of the things being proposed for new gun laws.

I doubt any of those would be acceptable to the majority of drivers, but it would make driving safer and save lives.

As for your suggestions "not yet tried."

- We already have rigorous background checks for purchasing firearms. They're done by the FBI's NICS, I don't know how it can be more rigorous.
- There is no "gun show exemption" or "loophole," that is more media buzzword BS. Private sale and transfer of anything (not just firearms) can not regulated by congress. It's another constitutional issue dealing with the regulation of commerce. It is still illegal for a person to sell a firearm to someone that they have reason to believe may not be legally able to own one. This is another issue that I'm not opposed to fixing though. It could be as simple as requiring the transaction to be witnessed by a licensed gun dealer and perform a background check.
- Assault weapons are already restricted. Real assault weapons that is, not what the media and lawmakers keep calling assault weapons. Once again I ask, why such fuss over the weapon type least used in crime? These "assault weapons" are expensive to acquire, and most criminals go for cheap, small caliber, concealable pistols and revolvers. [source] For more on what an assault weapon is and their use in crime, just head on over to this Wikipedia page.
- Restricting ammunition would be something that would effect responsible gun owners and likely have little effect on crime. Responsible gun owners are the ones that buy more ammo, go to gun ranges and practice.


5) You mean the steadily high murder rate that has been steadily declining for over two decades, by 50% since 1992? [source]

@RedSky

I didn't say the US is more violent by nature, and I don't think it is (the US has lower violence than the UK and Australia which have essentially banned gun ownership). With 70 million people in this country owning guns (NRA 2010) and 45% of households having a gun in them (Gallup 2011), if we were so violent, you'd hear about neighbors shooting it out all the time over trivial shit.

I read an article the other day, which I can't find right now, that showed the difference between gun ownership in large cities and urban areas vs. rural areas and small towns. The rate of gun ownership in rural areas and small towns was over 2x as in cities, but violence and murders are higher in larger cities. Does this mean more guns equals less violence? Whether it does or doesn't, I think it shows that more people crammed into a smaller space equals more violence.

Why should we punish millions of responsible gun owners because of the actions of a few (and some who weren't legally able to own guns). Around 35,000 people are killed in car accidents every year. Most car owners and drivers are responsible and safe, but there isn't a public outcry to impose crazy restrictions on them (although we could reduce the number of deaths caused by cars if we did). The reason is because a lot of people have an irrational fear of guns even though you're more likely to be killed or injured by a car than guns.

I blame a this on the media. Some people are also irrationally afraid of flying, even though it's one of the safest ways to travel. If on the same day for some freaky reason 500 people died in unrelated, isolated car accidents across the country and a plane carrying 200 passengers crashes killing everyone on board, which do you think will get the most news coverage?

I just read an article by Sam Harris last night titled FAQ on Violence, which is a followup answering some questions and criticism of a previous article titled The Riddle of the Gun. Just go read the article. He answers a lot of questions about violence, gun violence, using guns for self defense, etc. I don't agree with some of what he says, but it does echo some of what I've been saying in discussions on this subject.

Sam Harris has some interesting thoughts in this blog post: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-riddle-of-the-gun

"We could do many things to ensure that only fully vetted people could get a licensed firearm. The fact that 40 percent of all guns in the U.S. are legally purchased from private sellers without background checks on the buyers (the so-called “gun show loophole”) is terrifying. Getting a gun license could be made as difficult as getting a license to fly an airplane, requiring dozens of hours of training. I would certainly be happy to see policy changes like this. In that respect, I support much stricter gun laws. But I am under no illusions that such restrictions would make it difficult for bad people to acquire guns illegally. Given the level of violence in our society, the ubiquity of guns, and the fact that our penitentiaries function like graduate schools for violent criminals, I think sane, law-abiding people should have access to guns. In that respect, I support the rights of gun owners."

Sam Harris has some interesting thoughts in this blog post: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-riddle-of-the-gun

Sam Harris has some interesting thoughts in this blog post: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-riddle-of-the-gun

>> ^PalmliX:

Sam Harris in top form here, not letting Deepok get away with anything which leaves him with basically nothing!


i would not go as far as to say deepok had nothing but i will say that to have a productive discussion you first have to define the terms.

in that regard deepok failed and became quite defensive and combatative while harris was on point once those terms were defined.

i am not usually a harris fan.he tends to get caught up on the religious aspect of the metaphysical discussions but here he let that go fairly early and..in my opinion..was able to better express himself without all the butthurt.

i have to be careful when i criticize harris here on the sift.the fanboys are pretty fanatical in their devotion.

o ZING!

Sam Harris in top form here, not letting Deepok get away with anything which leaves him with basically nothing!

Yeah, the last couple of times I've seen Dawkins in debates (here in Australia on our Q&A show in particular) he came across as a bullish dick. I really felt that he was doing more harm than good towards his own cause by the harsh way he was treating members of the audience who were asking questions and the way he responded to things.

I used to love him, now I wish he'd step aside and let someone with better people skills take over for public appearances as he's not doing the atheist cause any good. I'd be more happy with Sam Harris.

You have been awarded 1 Power Point for fixing the embed code for Dead Pool video Sam Harris: Why We Should Ditch Religion | CNN. Thank you for helping maintain VideoSift's reliability.

I found these to be presumptuous. They do happen to some people, maybe even most people, but they don’t happen to all. Many people of no religion, and despite immense tragedies, live happy and fulfilling lives, and feel happy and fulfilled on their death beds. I’d further argue that people with religious faith also get depressed. I suspect you’d counter that anyone who is depressed has insincere faith. That seems tautological to me, but either way, it’s moot, for now.

Well, the central argument of the video is that life without God is meaningless. You've already agreed with that point, so the argument now seems to be is whether someone can be happy and fulfilled with a meaningless life. I'm sure there are plenty of people who weren't believers who died happily in ignorance of the truth, but the question is, did they understand that their life was meaningless? I doubt it. It is not something that many people are able to face, and even if they could, they certainly don't live that way. In some way or another, they are deluding themselves and living as if their life does have meaning.

Some people do, at least in part. It’s a lot more complex than just a lack of hope though. For some people it’s due to a tragedy, or overwhelming cognitive dissonance, or it’s simply chemical, and has no correlation with anything in their lives at all. Maybe I’m nitpicking. I just want to make clear that depression is a mental disorder and is not a synonym for, "lack of hope because I don’t have God in my life."

Hope is what keeps people going. Without hope, you are just going through the motions. When you have hope and lose it, it is emotionally devastating. A person without any hope is a person most likely clinically depressed.

You can call depression a kind of mental disorder, and some people may be born without the right chemical receptors for instance, but most people are depressed because of a lack of hope. A person, for instance, who worked their whole life and lost their retirement in an afternoon, or a mom whose kids abandoned her to live in a nursing home. They are not mentally ill, they are simply facing the cold, stark reality of their situation.

Here you slipped into metaphysical talk that means nothing to me, full of judgemental words ("sick and depraved") and terms that I had just told you I don’t accept as objective concepts ("evil"). You also know that I don’t think there’s any hope in your Yahweh God since he’s a mythological character, so I’m not sure where that’s coming from.

The point being, that if there is no God then no one is in the drivers seat here on planet Earth. I would be surprised if the extreme fragility of our civilization escaped you. If you look at history, and you contrast it to what is going on today, you will find that the new is simply the old in different packaging. We're watching the exact same game show, simply on a grander and more dangerous scale. Humanity has never been closer to utterly destroying itself anytime in its history than it is today. I'm sure, like everything else in creation, you will attribute that to dumb luck. However, if you think everything is a numbers game, then sooner or later the odds say that cooler heads will not prevail and there will be a civilization annihilating calamity. The truth is, it is only the sovereign hand of God that is restraining this from happening.

The reason I made that comment about God is because of your comment about your depression. The reason you have that feeling that if you believed in God you wouldn't be depressed is because you know there is hope in God.

(Also, not that it’s critical to the discussion, but I’d like a reference for your poll about young people not knowing who Hitler was.)

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/06/29/half-german-teens-dont-know-hitler-dictator_n_163659 3.html

Now, about "bliss". I didn’t define what I meant by that, so you didn’t understand it. I’ll make up for that now. By “bliss”, I don’t mean immediate pleasure, or instant gratification, or fulfillment of a goal, or basically anything you mentioned. I do mean a great powerful feeling of being centred, being in tune, achieving self-fulfillment, overflowing joy, love, inner peace, elation, connection, lightness, "harmony", "rapture" or a feeling that many describe as "doing what I was born to do/meant to be doing" or "transcendent". It’s the kind of happy that boosts your immune system and makes people around you feel good about themselves as well. (The words in quotes aren’t words I tend to use myself—I’m employing them to help clarify the concept I’m talking about.)

If you understand now what I mean by "bliss" (as opposed to instant gratification, etc.), you’ll understand that people don’t follow their bliss and rape people, nor find inner peace by beating their wives, and so there’s no need to append any rules about not hurting. I can’t imagine how anybody’s bliss could ever include causing harm to other people, but I’ll even address that hypothetical, towards the end of this comment.

Thanks for the elaboration. I am familiar with the philosophy of Sam Harris, and I figured you were borrowing from him, but it is good to know where you stand. My original point, however, still stands. You say you can't imagine someone finding bliss in hurting people. Well, have you ever heard of psychopaths? They do indeed find their bliss in acquiring power and control and making other people miserable, and they feel absolutely no remorse for doing so.

You also say that you feel the best state of a human being is to be blissfully happy. I'm sure everyone will agree with you that feeling blissfully happy is good. However, why should we believe this is actually what good is?. Yes, it feels good to feel good, but this doesn't tell us why we *ought* to do anything. Maybe this is just incredibly selfish and the opposite of good, or somewhere in the middle is true, or maybe none of it. You give no actual reason (beyond arbitrary statements like that which makes the world better or worse) to equate feeling good with moral goodness. In a meaningless Universe, neither is there any basis for thinking that you have any moral duties. This leads me to some questions that you didn't actually address in the last post. Let me ask them again because they are central to this discussion:

In a meaningless Universe there is no actual right and wrong, so why shouldn't you just do whatever you want? Why waste your time trying to navigate some moral landscape that you don't even believe really exists? Why not just take what you can, when you can, before you lose the opportunity?

I'll also address some of your comments:

In all cases, whatever they did, it was because they were feeling bad about something, weren’t centred, and reacted from "lizard brain" instincts of individual survival rather than from human compassion

People do evil because they get carried away by their lusts and become enticed. You view this as some sort of ignorance, or automatic function. Not so. When a person is doing wrong, they are almost always entirely aware of this, but simply override their moral restraints with their desire to fulfill their lusts. People are responsible for the evil that they do, not society, environmental factors, their parents, or anything else.

Divine morality isn’t necessary. Having any collective understanding of what is good and what is bad is enough. For most of humanity’s existence, even up to now, there hasn’t been a clear standard. In patches of geography where there was one, it only applied well to that time and culture. Just as ordinary people supplanted kings and emperors as absolute leaders without society collapsing, and just as ordinary people supplanted religions are sole arbiters of the law without society collapsing, ordinary people can supplant religion as arbiter of what is good and what is bad as well, and society will continue not to collapse.

I've already agreed with you that we all have a God given conscience that tells us right from wrong. Therefore, we don't need to read the bible to know that it is wrong to murder or steal. However, what God has commanded is that we all repent and believe in the gospel. This is something you aren't going to intuitively understand without being told.

And better than a list of what’s good and what’s bad is a system that determines for us what’s good and what’s bad. I’ve seen one model that I like, delivered by Sam Harris. The most salient bit starts at about 10:00 and runs to around 27:30. If you don’t want to watch it now, I’ll summarise the most important ideas: For a moral code to have meaning, it has to apply to some form of consciousness – it cannot apply to rocks and dust. Then there’s the central point which requires you to imagine "the worst possible misery for everyone", and assume that this situation is "bad". "Good" is then defined in terms of moving people away from this "worst possible misery for everyone". That’s it. I recommend hearing it from Harris himself.

I am familiar with his system, to which I reiterate the point; what is the ground for associating moral evil with misery and moral good with "moving people away from misery". Where do you get moral duties in a meaningless Universe?

The three advantages that occur to me of this system over Yahweh’s morality are that it’s a simple system rather than a long intricate list, so it’s quick to teach, easy to absorb, understand and reference, hard to corrupt, and all-inclusive; there’s absolutely nothing random about it, so odd details like not being allowed to wear garments made from two different thread types won’t make it in and there’s nothing objectionable about it from the standpoint of people who just want to do the right thing; and it’s truly universal in that it applies equally well now as it would have in 4000 BC China, in 30 AD Mesopotamia, or will in 12 000 AD Mars, so it’s broadly acceptable too.

The morality that God gives can be summed up in two commandments: Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and all thy soul, and all thy mind and all thy strength, and love thy neighbor as thyself. As Jesus told us:

Matthew 22:40

All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments

That's a very simple system. When you love God and other people everything else follows naturally.

Every act that is good makes things better for people. If an act makes the world worse, then it’s bad. Simple. Lots of generalities can be derived from it, like killing people is bad, respecting other people’s property is good, and there’d be no arbitrary crap about touching pig skin being bad or extra-marital sex being bad.

On the contrary, it's all arbitrary, because "what makes things better for people" or what "makes the world worse" is something determined by consensus. If everyone in the world agreed that torturing babies for fun made things better for people, it would be good in your view. If your moral system allows for this possibility, I think that's a sign its time to throw it away.

Even more generally, we clearly don’t require any god to tell us what’s good and what isn’t. We already have a conscience inside us that tells us what’s good and what isn’t regardless of laws. I know you believe that Yahweh made our conscience for us. Even if that were so, it doesn’t change the fact that if properly relied upon, a conscience precludes the need for an external set of laws. Any law that echoes what everyone naturally feels already is superfluous. Any law that contributes to human misery is morally wrong and deserves to be disregarded.

If this were true, there would be no need for courts, judges, prisons, or police officers. There are also laws which may make some people miserable but are necessary for the greater good.

You state that without a divine moral standard that exists outside our consciousness, there is no objective justice. This is true by definition. Without a true objective moral code, you further argue that nobody can condemn any action as bad without being hypocritical, so in effect, everything is permissible. This is not the case, however. Although the moral code I advocate isn’t "objective" in the sense that it exists beyond our consciousness, it is universal among humans. And if we’re only attempting to determine moral behaviour for humans, then a universally accepted standard among humans suffices, regardless of where we think it came from.

It doesn't suffice, though. Yes, we can both agree there is a universal morality among human beings. How is that fact supposed to serve as grounds to invent an arbitrary system of good and evil based on people following their bliss and avoiding misery? I could just easily reverse the two and say the existence of universal morality justifies that too. I could say that the existence of a universal morality justifies that we should all love eggplants and hate rutabagas. There is no logical connection here between the system you've created and universal morality.

If there is no objective morality, then nothing is really wrong. Any system you create in the end is a human invention, based on human interpretation, and agreed upon by human consensus. You still cannot get an ought from an is. Good could be defined as a world of people who love each other, or a world of people who love to eat children. What is wrong then is simply based on your personal preferences.

The arguments I make here don’t describe a perfect system. That’s wasn’t my intention. I believe they do, however, answer your concerns about non-objective morality being insufficient to guide humans.

I understand that this wasn't meant to be perfect. It has, however, raised more concerns than it answered.

>> ^messenger

@shinyblurry

Of what you said above in the first two paragraphs about the consequences of accepting meaninglessness as reality, just about all of it I fully agree with. For clarity, I’ll mark the exceptions:

the closer you are to death the less happy and hopeful you will become
and
Eventually, when enough tragedy happens to you, you will break down and the future will become more and more like a millstone around your neck.

I found these to be presumptuous. They do happen to some people, maybe even most people, but they don’t happen to all. Many people of no religion, and despite immense tragedies, live happy and fulfilling lives, and feel happy and fulfilled on their death beds. I’d further argue that people with religious faith also get depressed. I suspect you’d counter that anyone who is depressed has insincere faith. That seems tautological to me, but either way, it’s moot, for now.

Further, you comment that, "people become depressed because of a lack of hope."

Some people do, at least in part. It’s a lot more complex than just a lack of hope though. For some people it’s due to a tragedy, or overwhelming cognitive dissonance, or it’s simply chemical, and has no correlation with anything in their lives at all. Maybe I’m nitpicking. I just want to make clear that depression is a mental disorder and is not a synonym for, "lack of hope because I don’t have God in my life."

For all of our so-called progress, humanity is just as sick and depraved as it always has been. Evil is increasing, not decreasing, and mankinds destructive appetites will never be satiated. There is no hope in man, but there is in God. I think you know that.

Here you slipped into metaphysical talk that means nothing to me, full of judgemental words ("sick and depraved") and terms that I had just told you I don’t accept as objective concepts ("evil"). You also know that I don’t think there’s any hope in your Yahweh God since he’s a mythological character, so I’m not sure where that’s coming from.

(Also, not that it’s critical to the discussion, but I’d like a reference for your poll about young people not knowing who Hitler was.)

All that is to say I pretty much agree with your view of what meaninglessness implies, and if there’s any bits that you want to explore more, I’m all for it.

Now, about "bliss". I didn’t define what I meant by that, so you didn’t understand it. I’ll make up for that now. By “bliss”, I don’t mean immediate pleasure, or instant gratification, or fulfillment of a goal, or basically anything you mentioned. I do mean a great powerful feeling of being centred, being in tune, achieving self-fulfillment, overflowing joy, love, inner peace, elation, connection, lightness, "harmony", "rapture" or a feeling that many describe as "doing what I was born to do/meant to be doing" or "transcendent". It’s the kind of happy that boosts your immune system and makes people around you feel good about themselves as well. (The words in quotes aren’t words I tend to use myself—I’m employing them to help clarify the concept I’m talking about.)

If you understand now what I mean by "bliss" (as opposed to instant gratification, etc.), you’ll understand that people don’t follow their bliss and rape people, nor find inner peace by beating their wives, and so there’s no need to append any rules about not hurting. I can’t imagine how anybody’s bliss could ever include causing harm to other people, but I’ll even address that hypothetical, towards the end of this comment.

Lots of people do bad things to others and themselves, and later on, some may consider what they did was bad, or they might not. If they still think it was OK, it’s because they’ve used some kind of justification, like, "She did it to me first," "She was teasing me. What did she think would happen?" or, "He had it coming," or "I had no choice," And so forth. These are all rationalizations after the fact, justifications that allow them to still consider themselves as good people rather than change their behaviour or take responsibility for having done something wrong. These don’t address the real reason these people did these things. In all cases, whatever they did, it was because they were feeling bad about something, weren’t centred, and reacted from "lizard brain" instincts of individual survival rather than from human compassion.

I believe that the natural and best state for a human being to be is happy (and here again, I mean blissfully happy). Every bit of programming we have nudges us towards certain actions by rewarding us with feelings of happiness, or reduced misery. We only live once, so I would modify your description only slightly to, “taking what bliss you can when you can”.

Divine morality isn’t necessary. Having any collective understanding of what is good and what is bad is enough. For most of humanity’s existence, even up to now, there hasn’t been a clear standard. In patches of geography where there was one, it only applied well to that time and culture. Just as ordinary people supplanted kings and emperors as absolute leaders without society collapsing, and just as ordinary people supplanted religions are sole arbiters of the law without society collapsing, ordinary people can supplant religion as arbiter of what is good and what is bad as well, and society will continue not to collapse.

And better than a list of what’s good and what’s bad is a system that determines for us what’s good and what’s bad. I’ve seen one model that I like, delivered by Sam Harris. The most salient bit starts at about 10:00 and runs to around 27:30. If you don’t want to watch it now, I’ll summarise the most important ideas: For a moral code to have meaning, it has to apply to some form of consciousness – it cannot apply to rocks and dust. Then there’s the central point which requires you to imagine "the worst possible misery for everyone", and assume that this situation is "bad". "Good" is then defined in terms of moving people away from this "worst possible misery for everyone". That’s it. I recommend hearing it from Harris himself.

The three advantages that occur to me of this system over Yahweh’s morality are that it’s a simple system rather than a long intricate list, so it’s quick to teach, easy to absorb, understand and reference, hard to corrupt, and all-inclusive; there’s absolutely nothing random about it, so odd details like not being allowed to wear garments made from two different thread types won’t make it in and there’s nothing objectionable about it from the standpoint of people who just want to do the right thing; and it’s truly universal in that it applies equally well now as it would have in 4000 BC China, in 30 AD Mesopotamia, or will in 12 000 AD Mars, so it’s broadly acceptable too. Every act that is good makes things better for people. If an act makes the world worse, then it’s bad. Simple. Lots of generalities can be derived from it, like killing people is bad, respecting other people’s property is good, and there’d be no arbitrary crap about touching pig skin being bad or extra-marital sex being bad.

Even more generally, we clearly don’t require any god to tell us what’s good and what isn’t. We already have a conscience inside us that tells us what’s good and what isn’t regardless of laws. I know you believe that Yahweh made our conscience for us. Even if that were so, it doesn’t change the fact that if properly relied upon, a conscience precludes the need for an external set of laws. Any law that echoes what everyone naturally feels already is superfluous. Any law that contributes to human misery is morally wrong and deserves to be disregarded.

You state that without a divine moral standard that exists outside our consciousness, there is no objective justice. This is true by definition. Without a true objective moral code, you further argue that nobody can condemn any action as bad without being hypocritical, so in effect, everything is permissible. This is not the case, however. Although the moral code I advocate isn’t "objective" in the sense that it exists beyond our consciousness, it is universal among humans. And if we’re only attempting to determine moral behaviour for humans, then a universally accepted standard among humans suffices, regardless of where we think it came from.

The arguments I make here don’t describe a perfect system. That’s wasn’t my intention. I believe they do, however, answer your concerns about non-objective morality being insufficient to guide humans.

Thank you, it's fixed now!
In reply to this comment by doogle:
*dead

>> ^eventualentropy:

>> ^Enzoblue:
... The past and future are just predictably inaccurate fake realities in your head that make your life worse if you spend too much time on them.

Thanks, that makes a bit more sense. I can definitely see how brooding about the past or worrying about the future can be unproductive. But obviously it is necessary to plan for the future at some point, and it can also be useful to think about the past to learn from your mistakes. I guess he is just saying that most of us just take these thoughts too far?


Most of us practically live in those thoughts yeah. Think about one of the most happiest moments in your life. Sheer joy, I know you have one. I'm willing to bet that while you were in that moment, you had nothing to do the next day, no bills to pay or rent due - you had no wrongs to right, nothing nagging at you about something you did earlier. Totally in the moment and thinking about nothing in particular, just being in awe of how happy you are.

The other stuff is necessary, but most people need less of it. It helps me to snap out of my thoughts often throughout the day and just sense my surroundings. Like a mental time out.

>> ^Enzoblue:

... The past and future are just predictably inaccurate fake realities in your head that make your life worse if you spend too much time on them.


Thanks, that makes a bit more sense. I can definitely see how brooding about the past or worrying about the future can be unproductive. But obviously it is necessary to plan for the future at some point, and it can also be useful to think about the past to learn from your mistakes. I guess he is just saying that most of us just take these thoughts too far?

>> ^eventualentropy:

I watched the whole thing but I'm still not sure I understand his main point about thinking/brooding/etc.


He's telling you to get in touch with the present. That the past is a mock up of memories you collage in your head and the future is wishful thinking made up of stuff that probably won't happen like you think it will because you reliably suck at predicting. Most people are either brooding or anticipating, instead of thinking and feeling about what they are at the present moment, and the present moment is the only reality. The past and future are just predictably inaccurate fake realities in your head that make your life worse if you spend too much time on them.