After seeing an image I thought was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen I tried to create an imaginary friend of her and after she became established enough in my mind I guess, she immediately gave me ideas on what it truly meant to be right(which was a first to me since my philosophy on everything was very unfortunate prior) and I’ve been effectively living vicariously through her since...
hoofwall
Hi! I am socially retarded… There are many things the standard human was born with the capacity to grasp that I never can. The word “autism” appears to me to be being thrown around a lot lately, mostly as a meaningless word used to convey that one thinks another is simply not normal but when I first noticed how heavily users on the internet threw around the word two years ago I identified as such for a bit to make conversation more expedient. I am able to comprehend metaphors and similes and such for some reason, but things such as having the capacity to roleplay or being able to perceive what I should do in any given scenario to maximize the happiness of the human before me is incomprehensible to me. I like to think I am a purely logical thinker and was born to be such but I’d rather not start talking about that right now...
My education is pretty poor. Eighth grade. I have read next to no books, and the internet was what taught me to speak English as I do today. My English was very basic prior, even though it is my only language. I looked up in the dictionary every word I encountered that I couldn’t define for two years, until I decided that refining my expression in the English language for the human’s sake was a waste of time and stopped caring.
I feel like I can’t express more about myself without delving right into my philosophy, the likes of which I used to contest with every mind I came across indiscriminately only to have them still disagree with me 99% of the time despite my cornering them in argument, and I don’t really want to because I’ve had such bad experiences with convincing others to think like me. The downvote system on this website is kind of intimidating as well… my first post on this website got downvoted once almost immediately and I’m not sure if I can tell by whom. I hate systems that enable passive-aggression like that. Even conversing in real life is awful because others can use petty tricks to try to emotionally manipulate you instead of actually just explaining why you should think like them via argument. It’s just masturbation for them, and they have no interest in convincing you to think like them. I suppose that is one thing I feel I can safely say about my philosophy… I don’t see my opinions as just opinions, I see them as an objective rationalization of this universe the likes of which one cannot disagree with without simply being wrong. I want to rationalize everything too, you know. I used to be indoctrinated to the point where I thought simply asking questions was evil. All I’d ever wanted to do was rationalize to all my understanding of the universe to objectively minimize their pain and maximize their pleasure for the sake of forcing the world to tend to its most rational end as i perceive it but whatever… I’m still being impertinent with whatever I’m writing here since I don’t think just up and writing out my opinions would be a good idea.
I have very few interests. I really only care about defining right and wrong, and giving my philosophy to others, which I haven’t done for a very long time. One day I hope to start expressing my opinions on what is right and wrong in a formal manner just to have done so in my lifetime. I apologize for the entirely vague post… I still haven’t really any idea how this site works but if I ever debate users here or something I won’t hesitate to express my opinions in their entirety.
Hi. I did indeed mean what you express as “to reason” when I said “rationalize”… I am entirely unfamiliar with the distinctions made on this site so thanks for pointing out to me how others might misinterpret what I say. Also, thanks for the welcome.
Sorry for using you like this but, do you know whether or not swearing is against the rules here, and if so would you please tell me if it is or not? The closest to a rule list I found was just about etiquette. I’m wondering whether or not uttering like the “n word” for instance would get me banned or something… I want to know how much freedom I have for expression here. I don’t intend to spam or anything; I just want to know what I am allowed to do.
Sorry, before I mention my personal goals I just want to say that I disagree with the notion that logic is meaningless without being founded on an underlying goal… Logic as I understand it is by definition merely a method of thinking, or the concept of sequencing thought to reach conclusions, and determining why some of such sequences are right. I believe logic in itself- according to the second definition I proposed- tends to the end of a goal, and that goal is rationality. Naturally, without having anything to sequence logic is nothing and has no breadth, but in this universe where the breadth of the construct “logic” is contingent on the human’s ability to sequence data it should inherently have a goal, at least today as the human appears, and that goal should be rationality, in my opinion. I believe assuming your proposal is correct would mean assuming “logic” as you used it in your proposal is simply defined as a method of thinking, and not its more fundamental meaning, which I proposed.
My goal is simply to express in my lifetime my views on everything… I do not feel I can change the world. I do not feel I can simply approach every human I encounter and explain to them why I believe my opinions to be correct and all conceivable dissenting opinions to be wrong. I will just express myself in my own way one day and that will be it… I created an account on this website more or less randomly for me because I was recommended going here once, a while ago.
I do not believe that “stress” in itself is something to be considered when it comes to one’s method of forcing the world to tend to the end they want to… I will explain what I mean. Please excuse any possible argument by assertion fallacies henceforth… converting everything to E-Prime is tiring but I do believe opinions have to actually be defended to be rational… If i ever simply assert that I believe something is true that is a mistake, as i meant to rationalize its breadth in its entirety to believe it has the capacity to be defended and inherently rebut all conceivable dissenting arguments...
Obviously, the human’s understanding of rationality is a consequence of themselves, to some extent. That is not to say that rationality so defined is entirely a consequence of the human and that the human literally created a portion of this universe that retains the properties of “rationality”… What I mean is, humans appear to feel emotion, and humans appear to correlate their understanding of the concepts of “good” and “evil” to what they perceive to be positive and negative emotion, respectively. Fundamentally, every human who retains the standard properties of the human lives through their own emotionality and their idea of good and evil is founded on that very thing.
Ugh… I just realized if I expound my philosophy any further I will be affirming for the first time since posting here my opinions which many will probably disagree with but basically I think that “stress” if “stress” is defined as pain(negative emotion) entirely in the head, meaning it is simply perception, ascribing emotion to certain things and feeling pain as a result, it is entirely a consequence of perception and can be manipulated to become pleasure… Perhaps it will be a certain iteration of masochism, and perhaps actually enduring perceived stress in reality will have consequences on the outside world as distinguished from your own psyche, possibly prompting an entire lifestyle change but “stress” should be irrelevant if its properties can just be totally changed with a different opinion, in my opinion.
When it comes to me, I believe so strongly that all who disagree with me is wrong that it seems extremely unnecessary to saturate my believing their being wrong with something else in an attempt to make me cope with my own emotionality. I believe there are other ways to cope with oneself than compromising on their own beliefs. I just correlate things to good or evil freely, at face value. I really wouldn’t make progress insofar as inciting a revolution is concerned by tolerating what I believe to be wrong, either. Perhaps by “goals” you mean something other than forcing the world to tend to its most rational end as you perceive it.
About your last sentence, I don’t believe in manipulating via anything other than argument to entice others to do as you wish… If it is something less than true reason to think, which I believe can only be conveyed via argument of some sort, it will be blind conformity, and any society or standard based on that is doomed to conceive notions as worthless as the one it was founded on, making it inferior to what it could and I believe should be. Also, it’s interesting that misanthropes are drawn to reason. I kind of expected it but I’ve had bad experiences with self-proclaimed misanthropes retaining the human property I hate, rendering their sub-ostracization asinine in my eyes… I probably rambled a lot in this post, sorry. I don’t know what type of reply I would expect to this if any. Thanks for reading if you did.
Sorry, I suppose I misused the word “devolve”… I’ve seen others use it as I have in my post here so I thought it was okay, but I suppose not. Perhaps they misused it, and if so I should not be tolerating the arbitrary and blatant misuse of words. What I meant by that word though was simply falling in stature. My using the word was to express that I believed humans have fallen in stature to the point that they cannot fall in stature anymore, and that the humans who roam the earth today will continue to breed and forge the world they want without changing very much in the next few generations of human if ever.
I just realized this site has a quoting feature. That makes responding to posts SO much easier...
But I find it useful to remind myself that humans have no evolutionary reason to be perfectly rational.
Yes… I believe the same thing. One does not have to provide to anything a rational reason to copulate, and to breed. One does not need to provide a rational reason to anything to live, to kill, to, force the world to tend to the end they want or anything. Humans appear to simply do. Naturally, through generations of the human simply doing, and doing as they please, they have perhaps become incapable of actually questioning whether or not simply doing is right, but what do I know? This is just a theory, and not one I can prove with sheer logic. Even if I fancied doing so it would be a waste of time… It would be far worth my effort to simply deduce and affirm what it means to be right, and what it means to be wrong. Whether or not the human has the capacity to truly be rational and what caused rationality and being human to be mutually exclusive if they are can be questioned later...
I like this question. It is a lot less intimidating that a lot of the other posts on this site I’ve seen in my short time being here, and I feel I can actually contribute using only my philosophy and ability to express myself in the English language, rather than also needing knowledge on other constructs.
In my opinion, emotion starts and ends with the mind, so the notion that for instance a specific human’s emotion can exist outside of their mind is completely asinine. As such, listening to music in reality, in itself, is total redundancy. It is not mandatory for the Alice in your proposed scenario to listen to her music in reality to evoke and indulge in her emotion. The music she is listening to in reality serves only to interact with her physical being(in this scenario via her receptivity for sound) for the sake of rousing what I define as “memory” within her. Alice retains her emotionality regardless of ever having listened to her music in this scenario in her lifetime, therefore, the music serves only to rouse specific emotion within her, thus serving as a method to quantify it for her, mentally. There is still no inherent correlation between her music as it exists in reality and her emotion. All dissenting opinions are irrational, I believe...
Because Alice’s indulging in her music or any music in reality is entirely unnecessary insofar as maximizing her pleasure or minimizing her pain is concerned- which is upon which my philosophy is founded and the end to which I believe all humans should tend- if her indulging in her music in this scenario infringes upon the most basic utilitarian doctrine of “live and let live” she should stop. Alice will never be able to provide a rational reason to listen to her music. Alice will never be able to absolutely, objectively explain why she should infringe upon the doctrine of “live and let live” for the sake of her arbitrarily ascribing emotion to music in 3D space. It would take me several hundred words to explain why I believe maximizing(the human’s) pleasure and minimizing(the human’s) pain is objective good and I would rather not, not yet, but these are my opinions...
Excluding my simply explaining why I believe my basis for rational thought(against which I contest all other bases for rational thought and claim them to be inferior) is correct, I don’t see what more there is for me to address… sorry
Is my theory on why censorship is wrong correct?
Are you implying that I should conform to literal objective inferior* behavior simply because the human is irrational and the validity of my argument and ability to defend myself in argument does not matter to them?
*forgot this word before this edit
I don’t think that was the implication. What I took from it is that you shouldn’t be a dick.
Stop beating around the bush. I directly implied in the post of mines to which you are responding that I believe censoring myself because the human wants me to do so is irrational. You could have attempted to rebut my argument in my original post where I proposed my argument as for why I believe censorship is irrational. You could have asked me to expound something, such as perhaps why I value conforming to standards that I perceive to be the best so highly. You could have at the very least quantified what it means to “be a dick” for me and explained why I should care even a little bit about what humans perceive to be “dickish”. You did nothing of the sort.
What would insulting/infuriating the person with whom you’re discussing possibly accomplish, besides making them less likely to cooperate? besides making them less likely to cooperate?
And this is the main issue you have been ignoring. I am trying to approach things from a purely logical standpoint. You however are proposing here that I should consider raw human emotionality, as if that means anything; as if that explains why I should do so, why doing so is good, why doing otherwise is bad etc. Basically you leave almost everything undefined to me here and nothing of this post convinces me to think like you, or even fully quantifies your position. I currently do not care about human cooperation. I care about objective good, objective bad, and being objectively good. But to answer your question, insulting/ infuriating any human with whom I am conversing would serve to convey how evil I find them or their opinions. I have yet to be given a rational reason to abstain from expressing such indignant notions.
Mate, you can argument by assertion fallacy your opinions all you want but it appears to me that my opinions are correct, and that all conceivable dissenting opinions are incorrect, and I can explain why. If pure logic cannot convince others to think like me then does it not mean that the only way to have them conform to what I want them to is by compromising the integrity of my beliefs, and attempting to effect them via playing with their emotionality directly? That is irrational behavior. I would rather be correct and affirm my superiority the right way than try to manipulate people irrationally because my rhetoric will fall on deaf ears.
you go on to argue that that’s wrong because words don’t inherently correspond to their meanings. This seems to be your argument against censorship. But you don’t need to believe that certain combinations of words are inherently evil to be for censoring those words. You just need to believe that people hearing those words can result in things you don’t want.
I don’t understand why your claim here would be true, though. How could a human just “not want” something if they don’t believe that something is inherent evil? They think it is arbitrary evil? Consciously claiming that an opinion is arbitrary then thinking that opinion is worth something seems absolutely ridiculous to me. Is it not impossible to win an argument if your position is entirely arbitrary?
You seem to anticipate this sort of response earlier on (it’s hard to say, your writing isn’t easy to comprehend), but dismiss the response because apparently it’s irrational to feel emotions after seeing words. You think this because words don’t inherently mean anything. Why you feel we should only feel emotions when seeing things that inherently mean something is never explained.
I was trying to argue that seeing things could never inherently mean anything, though. I was trying to affirm that emotion as it exists in the human mind is completely independent of all external constructs, such as words, or nudity.
Profanity aside, most people here would agree that morality is to some extent arbitrary. What I don’t see is why you believe that has anything to do with censorship.
I don’t know what you’re referring to here. If you’re referring to my proposing the breadth of this universe that was just to have done so so the notion of my argument expecting blind conformity out or readers would be killed.
Finally, I’m downvoting this mostly because it’s very poorly written. It takes way too much effort to figure out what you probably meant and I would like to see less of this on this site. You say you haven’t read a book since 8th grade. I’m sure you haven’t.
Passive aggression aside, I still do not understand how what I written was poor at all. I don’t understand what I did wrong. Why should I do any of what you suggest I do?
I suppose I wouldn’t want someone incompetent for a certain task to accomplish that certain task but what I meant was, I do not actively hate any of those things I mentioned as distinguished from just the idea of the human.
Then why did you use the word “discriminate” when you meant “hate”?
Because I thought if that excerpt of mines were to be taken literally it would be understood as my simply not treating a retard, a black human, or a gay any differently from any other human were I to approach them for instance, or were I even to just consider them. I don’t ascribe negative emotion to my understanding of them so I don’t scowl when I think of them, for instance. I’ve also seen “discrimination” as a word used as I used it, and assumed my thought would be understood. A lot of what I say is to be taken something less than literally, such as the fact that I even use the word “retard” as an insult when I haven’t anything against literal retards, but my expression makes sense to me.
Are you implying that you believe objective morality bends to the whims of whatever method you need to convince a human to think like you? Are you implying that you believe the fundamental properties of the written and spoken word are just gone in certain instances where humans decide they want to be offended by them?
I am of the opinion that the written and spoken word could never be inherent evil. You appear to be implying that if a human thinks a word is inherent evil then I should treat it as if it is in order to accomplish a “good result”, if I must. What is a “good result”? If a “good result” is the objective most rational end the universe could tend to then compromising on one’s standards because the human has arbitrarily-decided they want you to absolutely does not facilitate that “good result”.
I think the same thing is going on here. You’re not swearing because “fucking” is such an amazingly useful word. You’re signalling something. If I had to guess, I’d say that you’re signalling that you don’t need us by burning your bridges with us.
Who is “us”? Is “us” those who live by LessWrong’s philosophy? This community disagrees with my argument? But yes, I believe your conclusion is what I said outright… I use it because it is a trigger word to humans… It pisses them off, despite the fact that I may have said or written a thousand words of argument prior to dropping a human’s trigger word that explains why ascribing emotion. and the emotion they do to their trigger word is irrational.
Except as we’ve just established you would (and should treat them differently).
Excuse me? Did you miss the part of the excerpt of mines you quoted in this post where I said “were I to approach them for instance, or were I even to just consider them”? I said I would not discriminate against those subset of human were I to approach them, or consider them, and that is what I expected my original remark to be understand as. Without adding variables you have no reason to consider from the excerpt itself, when simply considering me and a retard, a black human, or a gay, I would not treat them any differently than I would any other human.
Although, here it’s less about confusing two meanings and more about ritually saying statements perceived as socially desirable even if it would be insane to actually act on the literal advice.
I don’t really understand this but I would like to affirm that I do not very much care for social constructs. I care for argument, and I care for reason. As I am probably autistic, I cannot understand many social constructs and have yet to be given rational reason to even consider them, so I don’t. If you wish you convince me to heed social constructs in any way please provide an argument defending your notion.
I hope you realize that you expect sheer, unadulterated blind conformity from me here, and that you have not even remotely attempted to prove my expression in the English language to be inherent evil, and your proposed amended iteration of my expression to be inherent good.
I consider it important because I am totally extreme with my opinions. I hate humans so much I correlate every aspect of them to evil. I worship what I consider to be objective good so much that I’m fucking turned on by it, which is ridiculous since a lot of it isn’t even remotely sexual. In my eyes, everything conceivable can be forced to conform to the dichotomy of good verses evil, and if something cannot be good it is evil. I want the opposing party to understand that I find their philosophy utterly disgusting if I disagree with it, and I want them to know that I want them to think like me, and to turn to me to have their questions answered. I once wanted to force the world to tend to the end that I wanted it to, but that seems not realistic. I still have my belligerence and extreme opinions, though. I would also like to affirm again that I have yet to be given a single rational reason to abstain from expressing my indignation towards anything when I feel like expressing it. Also, human morality is exclusively a consequence of emotion… it is only natural I want to affirm that I correlate evil to pain, and anger.
In your first scenario, I just cannot understand… perhaps it is my simply lacking certain mental faculties here that would render my mind normal, but I cannot sympathize with just not wanting certain food while not actually claiming that your consuming that certain food will be inherent evil, or that the certain food is in itself inherent evil. If the evil is not inherent then the argument is arbitrary, as the evil you claim is not a fundamental property of that construct as it exists naturally in this universe. If I don’t want to eat something you could bet your ass that I would argue against my consuming that thing to the death...
In the second scenario that is one where one must compromise on what I believe to be the objective most rational method for the sake of accomplishing a side goal, which is different to simply forcing the world to tend to its most rational end. One might have to do that to simply continue living. That is a very cheap scenario to propose… the human’s irrational world makes it so you cannot be rational(as I perceive it) without possibly throwing your life away. Composing this paragraph was difficult, and the first paragraph here was a second draft but I’d like to be clear that I am of the opinion that it is impossible to think something is arbitrary evil, rather than inherent evil… arbitrary evil does not make sense to me…
Sorry, never been here before and know nothing about this place and all the other “stupid questions” here seem super formal so I feel really out of place here but, how common is it for the users on this site, the likes of whom likely all refer to themselves as rationalists to be misanthropes?
I hate humans. I hate humans so much. I used to think I could change them. I used to think every human who exhibited behavior I found to be inferior was simply ignorant of true rationality. Mines is a very long story that I no longer want to tell but it was months of thinking I could change every mind I found inferior before I came to the conclusion that humans are worthless and that they’ve simply devolved to the lowest common denominator, to the point where they retain not the capacity to grasp the objective breadth of rationality in this universe unless they lack the very things that make them human.
I have extremely strong opinions on everything I’ve cared to question, the likes of which I wish to express formally before I die but I hate humans so much. I wouldn’t be doing it for the human. I am probably technically depressed at the moment and have been for a long time and was just wondering how many self-proclaimed rationalists consider themselves misanthropes, or at least exhibit misanthropic views...