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shivas.wisdom
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1) Yeah that's not contradictory, it's the principle of self-defence. It's wrong, unless it's a proportional response to harm directed at you.
Sure, I can hypothesize situations where this fictional hacker group might overstep the bounds of direct action into authoritarianism. I'm certain you understand how those other two examples are outside of that boundary as well.
----- 2) Least bad according to you. For me, the least bad option is living according to my convictions damn the consequences!
----- 3) It's an interesting topic for me as well. I'm sure ranged weapons were an important tool, I think the only error is not acknowledging that ranged weapons existed for a long time before organized warfare came along. By this I mean that it wasn't solely the ability to (relatively) safely commit violence that enabled warfare - there were foundational, societal causes. Yes, centralized government.
----- 4) So basically, 'it's easiest to take the easy option, and morality isn't always the easiest option' - I mean, I wouldn't dispute it, but I don't see it as some binding truth. Sometimes it is easier to go the moral route, and sometimes people will take the harder route anyways. I think you're better off framing this as a personal conviction rather than an inherent quality, because that seems to be all it is.
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shivas.wisdom
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Quote:
Kryptos said: I have a very hard time coming up with an example of something that is absolutely 100% wrong at all times, without circular definitions.
That which is both unnecessary and harmful. Of course, that still leave some wiggle room when it comes to interpretation.
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Kryptos
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1) I do not presume myself able to distinguish just violence and unjust violence. There is usually a line, and it is usually crossed in both directions. Further, I don't think this particular would be an example of the most effective forms of direct action.
2) Okay then. So there is no argument. Right.
3) I think that would also be questionable. We've come to the impasse before: how many people in a power structure is the cutoff that delineates between a centralized and a not centralized government?
4) I never claimed that this was anything but my own conviction. I just happen to think that a lot of people think like me, i.e., will take the easy route. As evidence, I gesture broadly to everything outside of where the zapatistas and maybe a few co-ops exist. This is a big problem for leftists that they need to overcome at some point. I hope they do.
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Re: last post, because for some reason the thing won't let me quote from the new post warning
Interpretation being the difference between usable information and meaningless platitude.
Edited by Kryptos (04/19/23 10:59 PM)
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336
menehune


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Quote:
SirTripAlot said: It can change with time, also.
Just because an example of failed morality (by one society) that is viewed as moral (by another society), doesn't make it so. I think reaching a general consensus between all, is possible although that may be a pipedream.
Take murdering a child. Is it moral to slit the throat of a 7 year old, for the sole purpose of the act itself? Are there socities that view that as moral? If they did, would it make it moral?
The point is that nothing is moral or immoral unless you believe it to be. Thus morality is relative and different for everyone and everything. Rarely do creatures do something for no reason. There is always some justification that is created. Is it moral for children to die of cancer? Or for a planet to be destroyed by a meteor? Or for a forest to burn? Part of what creates a culture or a society is that the majority of people agree upon what they believe to be moral or immoral, but in reality, those are just personal beliefs that are no more or less real than any other belief.
The extreme scenario you give about killing a child is only seen as immoral under certain circumstances. I.e. today many don't see abortion as immoral. Or if a child was a zombie, or was insane and was trying to kill someone, etc. This same principle could be applied in every avenue. If I'm not mistaken.
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shivas.wisdom
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I'm not commenting on the effectiveness of this fictional hacker group, just the conflating of it with the sole authority of authoritarianism. Being unable to perfectly distinguish just violence from unjust violence doesn't mean we're unable to make informed yet fallible decisions; in my experience, common situations that call for self-defence aren't exactly trolley problems. I don't vouch for anyone else, but I trust myself to use my own agency responsibly. As for prehistoric societies, the number of people doesn't make the difference - it's two alternative methods of organization. Centralized organization consolidates power in a single individual/group, while decentralized organization distributes power across multiple individuals/groups. We might not have an absolute line between prehistoric stateless societies and proto-state societies, but it's still true that the development of organized warfare is closely associated with the formation of the state (although it could be attributed to a low chance of discovering the required paleolithic evidence to demonstrate otherwise).
Finally, I don't think that moral code is a platitude, regardless of interpretation. Harmfulness and necessity are meaningful qualities, they just aren't objective qualities - but neither is morality so that shouldn't be surprising. The point of the post was to illustrate that the 'something' doesn't have to be a specific act - the intent behind the act or the effects of the act can be what makes an act moral or not. That's how I get around being a moral relativist with a moral code.
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Kryptos
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Re: Cuba [Re: 336]
#28286236 - 04/19/23 11:57 PM (9 months, 3 days ago) |
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Mmm, yeah, good point. Is it moral to shoot a child who is a mass shooter? Lot of people say that armed guards would help that situation...which means, implicitly, that sometimes it's time to blow away a kid. Like that teacher that got shot a while back, there's no way that six year old got the drop on her. If she was strapped, she could have neutralized him pretty easily, especially since she knew something was off.
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Kryptos
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Quote:
shivas.wisdom said: As for prehistoric societies, the number of people doesn't make the difference - it's two alternative methods of organization. Centralized organization consolidates power in a single individual/group, while decentralized organization distributes power across multiple individuals/groups. We might not have an absolute line between prehistoric stateless societies and proto-state societies, but it's still true that the development of organized warfare is closely associated with the formation of the state (although it could be attributed to a low chance of discovering the required paleolithic evidence to demonstrate otherwise).
I am not sure about this. When I think of centralization of power, I usually think of a society large enough that one could feasibly not know the ruler. I'm thinking more city-state type of thing. But that happens about 4000BC, while we have evidence of warfare as far back as 13000.
I think it is very likely that the first organized war broke out when tribes settled, and one tribe had a bad harvest that year, and they decided to beat up the tribe next door instead of starving. This does not require centralized power. This requires a bunch if hungry people with bows who know, or think they know, that other people are eating good.
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SirTripAlot
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Re: Cuba [Re: 336]
#28286274 - 04/20/23 01:26 AM (9 months, 3 days ago) |
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Quote:
336 said:
Quote:
SirTripAlot said: It can change with time, also.
Just because an example of failed morality (by one society) that is viewed as moral (by another society), doesn't make it so. I think reaching a general consensus between all, is possible although that may be a pipedream.
Take murdering a child. Is it moral to slit the throat of a 7 year old, for the sole purpose of the act itself? Are there socities that view that as moral? If they did, would it make it moral?
The point is that nothing is moral or immoral unless you believe it to be. Thus morality is relative and different for everyone and everything. Rarely do creatures do something for no reason. There is always some justification that is created. Is it moral for children to die of cancer? Or for a planet to be destroyed by a meteor? Or for a forest to burn? Part of what creates a culture or a society is that the majority of people agree upon what they believe to be moral or immoral, but in reality, those are just personal beliefs that are no more or less real than any other belief.
The extreme scenario you give about killing a child is only seen as immoral under certain circumstances. I.e. today many don't see abortion as immoral. Or if a child was a zombie, or was insane and was trying to kill someone, etc. This same principle could be applied in every avenue. If I'm not mistaken.
You changed my example. It was the murdering of a 7 year old child by slitting of the throat, merely for the act itself....not an abortion or a zombie. That is some serious mental gymnastics to get there.
Edited by SirTripAlot (04/20/23 01:30 AM)
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Kryptos
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This feels like using murder as an example of immorality, in the sense that you're using what is essentially a circular definition.
Sort of, not quite, same ballpark?
When you say something has no reason and is done for the act itself, that seems weird to me. I think that everything is done for a reason, no matter how abhorrent or seemingly invalid the reason is from another perspective.
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ballsalsa
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I was just reading about a kid who stabbed a younger girl to death because he wanted to see how it felt. That seems like the kinda thing he's talking about.
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SirTripAlot
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My point, is that in the example, it was not an abortion, which can be moral in many instances or a zombie. Say homeboy was pissed that little boy shit his pants. Does that make it worse or less harmful compared to a thrill kill (for the act itself)?
This type of thing doesn't happen that much (compared to other acts)....because it is viewed as absolutely not moral in any sense. I think its a little crazy to rubber stamp every situation as morally relative, that there is no definitive conclusion on the morality of any act, no matter the depravity.
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Edited by SirTripAlot (04/20/23 01:17 PM)
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Kryptos
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Well, when I say morality is relative, I mean the circumstances of the act change the validity of the act.
If someone kills a child for shitting their pants, they may think it is moral, but society will likely disagree. (Although, again, historical morality as seen in Deuteronomy and Leviticus does on occasion assign the death penalty to children who misbehave, so that may well have been seen as moral at one point)
If someone kills a child that is pointing a gun at them, that becomes a much more morally gray situation. In many cases, modern society would, in fact, support killing said child and possibly even consider it a moral good. When the cops kill a teen mass shooter, I don't see an outcry of indignation that a child was killed.
The act itself is the same: the killing of a child. The situation dictates the level of acceptance that society assigns to the act.
The way I see it, morality is a black and white good/bad delineation for actions. An immoral action is always wrong regardless of circumstances, while a moral action is always right regardless of circumstances.
That's why people that advocate for fixed morality often involve the biblical ten commandments, which all forbid specific actions regardless of circumstances.
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shivas.wisdom
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Quote:
Kryptos said: I am not sure about this. When I think of centralization of power, I usually think of a society large enough that one could feasibly not know the ruler. I'm thinking more city-state type of thing. But that happens about 4000BC, while we have evidence of warfare as far back as 13000.
I think it is very likely that the first organized war broke out when tribes settled, and one tribe had a bad harvest that year, and they decided to beat up the tribe next door instead of starving. This does not require centralized power. This requires a bunch if hungry people with bows who know, or think they know, that other people are eating good.
A society large enough that one wouldn't know the ruler... Isn't that just an arbitrary definition of centralized power? It's not like fully formed city-states and dynastic kings sprang up out of nowhere in 4000BC. Sedentism, agriculture, social stratification, and centralized political structures - these are all associated with the neolithic revolution, a period of time that closely correlates with our archeological record of organized warfare.
The conditions you describe, "a bunch of hungry people with bows who know that other people are eating good", would have existed for tens of thousands of years before the earliest evidence of organized warfare. I'll ask again, how do you explain that gap?
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Kryptos
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Sedentism.
More specifically, the stockpiling of food. Nomads don't stockpile food. When times are lean, times are lean for everyone in the region. There is no point raiding next door.
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shivas.wisdom
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How are you isolating sedentism/food storage from all those other causes? It's not like cultures became sedentary in a bubble - although outliers exist, the shift to sedentism is very closely associated with the adoption of agriculture and formation of cities - which is all closely associated with political centralization and social stratification.
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Kryptos
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Unless your argument is that we are necessarily bound to centralized government unless we decide to become nomadic, you're skipping over thousands of years of urbanization. The first evidence of five figure populations is in 4-5000BC.
This is why I keep asking you for a specific delineation between centralized and decentralized government. Are you saying that a village of maybe a few hundred organizing a warbard to attack another village of maybe a few hundred is an example of centralized government?
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336
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Quote:
Kryptos said: When you say something has no reason and is done for the act itself, that seems weird to me. I think that everything is done for a reason, no matter how abhorrent or seemingly invalid the reason is from another perspective.
Exactly.
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SirTripAlot
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Re: Cuba [Re: 336]
#28287493 - 04/20/23 11:04 PM (9 months, 2 days ago) |
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Abortion and zombies lol
-------------------- “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
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336
menehune


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It may be wrong to abort a human, but is it wrong to abort a zombie? lol
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shivas.wisdom
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Quote:
Kryptos said: Unless your argument is that we are necessarily bound to centralized government unless we decide to become nomadic, you're skipping over thousands of years of urbanization. The first evidence of five figure populations is in 4-5000BC.
This is why I keep asking you for a specific delineation between centralized and decentralized government. Are you saying that a village of maybe a few hundred organizing a warbard to attack another village of maybe a few hundred is an example of centralized government?
Necessarily bound? No... Human culture isn't bound by strict rules for how it has to happen; but we still have knowledge of the particular path human development has taken, and there is a very strong association between sedentism, agriculture, social stratification, and centralized political structures - it's why these traits are grouped together as the neolithic revolution. "Five figure populations" is an arbitrary measure you've made up - fully formed city-states didn't just appear, which is why I specifically referred to 'formation of cities'. A direct causal relationship is difficult to establish, but we know none of these traits developed in a vacuum. Human organization is defined by the process, not the number of participants - I'm not sure why this is confusing you. A village chieftain orders the attack? Centralized organization. A village gathering decides via consensus? Decentralized organization.
So I've answered your question again, now will you explain how you're isolating sedentism/food storage from all those other causes? Remember that your first argument about the invention of the bow leading to organized war fell flat too.
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Edited by shivas.wisdom (04/21/23 12:39 PM)
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