Quote (Deathslaya16 @ Jan 20 2015 10:06am)
i can understand why u are mad at the world

i would be too if i was u

but im not so im here for u if u need some "dont jump" support

my inbox is always open for u

1) I think a form of regulated capitalism is the best economic structure I can come up with (realistically), and I do like the democratic republic style of governance. Might prefer a proportionate take system more like Britain in order to introduce party diversity and encourage 3rd party voting.

2) I think basic education to the age of 18 is a good thing. An educated public will make better decisions than an uneducated one, will be able to support themselves better than an uneducated one (and thus decrease welfare reliance, poverty, etc), and in general will be a more successful population.

The image below is an excellent argument.

http://favimages.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/john-green-quotes-sayings-public-education-brainy-quote.jpg

4) It starts at home. IMO this is the second greatest problem facing America today (my nation). We've got all this other shit figured out, we have computers in our pockets, and we still have people starving on the streets and dying of exposure. It would cost around $30B to end world hunger, but to end national hunger it should only be a few billion (every year). That is easy to find within our budget, given how many bloated programs we have that could easily be reduced, cut, or streamlined. But that's not a long-term solution, that's throwing money at the problem. What the U.S. needs to do is find a way to offer employment opportunities to the homeless. Lewis Black, comedian though he is, had a great idea on how to do this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgebfbjKm48

And in essence, that's what needs to be done--give away some simple, low paying jobs doing anything, from picking up trash to building a big fucking thing. They get money and can fend for themselves, get work experience and can then find employment. That's how welfare should work: we give you stuff, and then you earn more stuff and find a way out (with help, but of your own volition). And there are people out there who want to work.

5) I've always been in favor of a national sales tax. You pay proportionate to what you spend (food is tax free, everything else is taxed) and we cut the income tax. Solves the problem of people working under the table, 'cuz there's no table. Solves the tax loopholes. Solves the issue of corporate tax loopholes and companies refusing to pay squat in taxes. Not an undue burden on the wealthy, because everyone is paying the same tax. Doesn't punish those who save money (my problem with wealth taxes, which are another potential solution). Pretty fair for everyone and should bring in additional revenue.

6) The biggest reason America is in the shitter is because of the money in politics. If we can find a way to take most of the money out of politics, and make politics less like a constant election cycle and more like people actually working to help the nation, then we'd have made a huge step. As it is, congressmen are more worried about getting re-elected than getting work done. Congress is almost constantly on break. Congress does very little and knows very little and simply stays elected by throwing masses of funds at the voters and pretending that's a qualification. I've shot around some ideas in threads previously, but they are all flawed in some major way. I'm not sure how to accomplish it. Maybe have congress duty like jury duty, where random people are selected to fill one legislative body and that way we have real people in office, not some puffed-up disconnected millionaires who have never done dishes in their life, let alone struggled to make rent payments month to month. Then maybe we'd see some sort of improvement.

- Drab

Abortion - what do you feel on the matter, and why?

I believe that it is a woman's body and therefore, ultimately, her choice. The big debate is over when "human" life begins, and I don't think we'll ever have a definitive answer to that question. Is "human" when it has a full set of human DNA? Is it when it contains the functional organs of a human? When it is capable of higher-level thinking? None of these are end-all be-all answers. I think that abortion is a legitimate operation until the fetus can live outside of the mother. Until it's born, a baby is literally a parasite, leaching nutrients from the host mother. When the baby can be removed from that environment and be reasonably expected to survive (with the help of medicine and technology, of course), it is too late to abort.

Religion - Is it good or bad? More specifically, Christianity and Islam.

Religion does a lot of good for a lot of people. I am personally not religious, but I know a lot of people for whom (the belief in) God has been a major help. Christians and Muslims donate huge amounts of money to charity; Christians do it because Jesus commands it, and Muslims do it because it's one of the Five Pillars of Islam. You have fanaticals, sure, but you have those in every group (Anders Behring Breivik, the Nordic bomber/shooter) and on the whole, religion does far more good than harm.

Suicide - is it someone's right?

I think that the right to die should exist medically in cases of terminal illness. Your body your choice. In all other medical cases, no. I think that if someone wants to take their life in another situation, that's their decision and they should have to own that decision and take their own life.

Free will - does it exist?

Excellent question. Nobody knows. I'm personally compelled by a model called "free will determinism," which is sort of a perverse mesh of the two schools of thought. Determinism is the belief that all of our actions are pre-determined, either by a deity or because of the way electrons were spinning when the universe was first created. I think we're all a lot like computers: our previous experiences program us to have certain reactions, certain preferences, and certain responses in a number of situations. And I think that while we have the choice to do whatever we want, we won't, because that's how we're programmed. I believe it is perfectly possible if one had access to all possible knowledge of a moment, to predict the exact actions of another person. Of course we'll never be able to do that, or even know which model is true, but it's a fun exercise none the less.

Free speech - should legislation make hateful speech illegal?

No. Mills says it best, I think, in On Liberty.



Cloning - should we do it?

It brings up some interesting moral dilemmas. And some scientific ones.

For the cloning of humans, what is the clone's legal status? Same person? Different person? Person at all? A lot of this comes back to the first question on abortion--what constitutes human life?

A further concern is the biological aspect. Age is carried in DNA somehow. When we cloned Dolly the lamb, her body developed diseases and weaknesses as though she was her total age (can't remember the numbers right now, that was a LONG time ago). Is it ethical to bring something "back" when it's just going to be decrepit soon? Are we transporting the mental structure? How are memories handled? Is it ethical to give "birth" to something with an effective age of 70? Is there a way to prevent this?

We can't even handle legislating the internet right now. Until legal philosophy catches up with the tasks brought about by the possibility of cloning, we're nowhere near ready to legalize. More lab time though, definitely.

- drab

Limits to free speech
I look at it from this perspective - everyone has the right to talk, everyone has the right to drive.. but for the sake of protecting other people (and yourself) and bettering society, our right's of driving have been limited - so too should our rights of speech.
a certain level of speech becomes "assault" or "harassment" once its taken too far.
I think if you're singling out an individual and literally harassing them, you're going too far. It can lead to bad things, like depression, or even that person choosing to end their life simply because someone wouldn't stop verbally abusing them.
Everything in moderation!

>Do you think we're hardwired to spread our seed as much as possible? Does that go against the potential to have a monogomous relationship where both people are at such levels of intimacy and trust they almost become one being?

Monogamy is something religion pushes, it allows even the lowest rungs of our society to have families and reproduce. With the decay of morality, religion, sexuality, and society not only does sexual deviancy increase but family also declines. Monogamy is preferred but it isn't the only mating strategy, I would not even consider marrying in America as it stands, it is too risky without serious precautions and planning, because even if you do everything right you can still be fucked by the courts. You would have ot get a solid mutually agreed prenup, assets protected under incorporation, a trust setup for wealth obtained pre-marriage and a trust setup for your kids that she wouldn't be able to touch. It would be a lot of work and legal trouble just to protect yourself in the event of a divorce, I don't see a point in it. I still want kids and a family but I don't see it as a viable option without serious financial risk, who doesn't want to spread their seed, it is something you have to go through to pass your genes on.

I think men and women have different reproductive strategies.

Women select for quality, men select for quantity.

Women will share the best of men if they could get a chance at it.

Men have more variable standards and aim for trying to get as much as they can.

You can see it in our biology, women have a limited number of eggs available, men have virtually infinite reproductive capacity and no hardcap like menopause.

This is where the double standard exists, it isn't really a double standard because men and women are different and not comparable because of their different reproductive duties, it is women's job to select for the best and make sure they succeed. So polygamy would mean different things for each sex, hmm.

I don't believe we're specifically hardwired for polgamy, though if you look at the numbers, a small minority of men are actually reproducing but most women are getting theres. This indicates that there is a sexual/social hierarchy in humans and the most successful are still going to win, genetically. Things to look for to determine this, STD Rates in women compared to men, the numbers on what percentage Male/Females are successfully passing their genes on and the recent decline in relationships. You will find that without any real incentive to marry (No Fault divorce, de-stigmitization of single-mother hood, etc.), women have returned to a more natural mode of pursuing a mate and without the same constraints, respect to monogamy, morality, and sanctity that once existed our women will act out until someone puts them in line, disaster strikes, or someone conquers our weak pansy white asses.


Religion: Is great, though it has a specific purpose of preservation, Christianity is a masochistic sacrifice religion. You'll find those who gave up Christianity, especially on the left, never really left the morality and virtues behind. They still feel they have to be altruistic, self-sacrificing, in some cases hating themselves and their people. White people in particular do not respect what they have created, they feel bad for it. There's a crazy Schizoid guy named Ted Kaczynski who wrote a manifesto and included in it is a brief few points on the problems of leftism, though most of what he says is insane anti-social ramblings, his section on leftism is spot on: http://editions-hache.com/essais/pdf/kaczynski2.pdf

I think Muslims preserve a lot of what Christianity used to be like, though it has a similar Abrahamic origin, it is a lot more aggressive and resilient to Western liberalism and a lot of the true believers still lived in conditions where religion is a base necessity. We will see if liberalism can cope with the dissonance of embracing Islam against their own, not really realizing it will destroy them too, or maybe they want to be conquered. Where there is a void of power, someone else will take the claim, when the West falls from glory then there will be someone else ready to fill the vacuum.

Free will: I'm kind of a determinist myself, at least a historical and biological determinist and in a lot of other ways, though I feel like they usually conflict with each other. I feel that history is cyclical and civilizations in particular have life cycles, the West is in a decline, a lot of my feelings for this come from reading Spengler who is in every way a pessimist.

- aloktloj

This post was edited by FrozenWater on Apr 27 2015 09:41am

Abortion = murder. I consider it undeniable that a fetus is a human, though its status as a legal person remains arguable. Due to the non-aggression principle that drives libertarian philosophy, acting against (what I consider to be) a person to cause their death is the greater evil compared with imposing upon a woman the consequences of her actions. I do not make an exception for rape, the child isn't the criminal party. I do make exceptions to preserve the life of the mother, deeming such an abortion to be justifiable homicide.

All drugs should be decriminalized, and marijuana should be legal. Society's concerns about others' well-being should focus on drugs as a healthcare issue, not a criminal one.

I think there's a very fine line between faith and religion. I support both, but understand that the latter can be used for unscrupulous and bigoted means. This applies to more than Christians and Muslims. I feel that public servants are entitled to act in a manner consistent with their faith, so long as it does not impose the faith itself upon others. Ergo I do not subscribe to the notion that there is a complete barrier between church and state, but I do understand that there should be reasonable limitations between the two. If a predominantly Muslim community wants to chisel "Allah is the one true God, and Mohammed is his messenger" onto the outside of their courthouse, I really don't have a problem with that. But I do have a problem with them wanting to enforce Shariah law onto me.

Yes, suicide is a right, and death with dignity should be available to people. But I support reasonable restrictions that would make legal suicide difficult, so as to impede the mentally unstable.

Yes, I believe in free will, and reject the notions held by determinism.

I do not condone restricting free speech. The best counter to hateful free speech is the free speech of others. I wholly support the speech of bigots like the Westboro Baptist Church, even while rejecting their conclusions.

Cloning organs? Sure. Cloning people? No.

No, I think we're predisposed to monogamy. I don't oppose polygamy in concept, assuming free will is used to engage in it, but understand that historically it is abused by predatory types.

- aratnas

Abortion - what do you feel on the matter, and why?

Early-term abortion, like immediately after pregnancy and such is fine. Late-term abortion is trickier. I think nuance is important in this issue as there is no clear-cut answer. I think abortion ought to be mandatory in fetuses who will be born with an illness that will cause them to have no quality of life.

For a crazy idea, one scenario in the future could be that sexual reproduction will be completely eliminated and all people will be modified to be unable to conceive traditionally, and instead would have to use fertilized egg implantation as a means to reproduce. This also would be a big step toward a solution for population growth, and would allow all parents to make use of preimplantation genetic diagnosis to move towards a better humanity.



Free will - does it exist?

I'm a compatibilist http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/


- gnigayov