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exton
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Joined: 13 Dec 2006
Posts: 4218
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 Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 10:59 pm Post subject: |
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| Lester wrote: | | 1. Exactly, and so was your statement. |
...no, i meant the part about "by the same logic".
An anarchic communal society is completely different from a large scale capitalist federal democracy.
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2. Because there are two parts of the brain, left and right, and the right side doesn't dominate thinking. |
...that's not what i mean.
I mean, why would you ALLOW yourself to do something irrational, knowing full well that it's irrational?
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3. Not at all, you can strive for impossibility knowing that it's impossible but that you can make things better. |
But then the "impossible" goal isn't really your goal at all. You'd just be falsely claiming that it is.
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4. I gave an example, but another, still tonnes of executions, still wars, still genocide, still racism and intolerance, sure there are peaceful nations, but we had those in the middle ages too! |
It's a question of magnitude.
Read about it. You'll find that, for any given horror of the past, we have a lot less of it today.
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5. It's true the quality of the food shelter and protection varied, but they still had it, because otherwise they would die, and it's not good to have corpses for slaves. |
And, similarly, it's not good to have corpses for wage slaves.
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6. Some have never posted in this thread before, so you could not design your statements for them, having no prior knowledge of them, having all power is not the same as having all knowledge. |
A: It is, in fact, the same thing. If you are not able to know everything, then you are not all-powerful.
B: god is omniscient anyhow.
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7. Not at all, there is a definition of perfection that everyone will agree on, and I gave it some time before. |
Rather than making me hunt for it, can you repeat it?
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8. Of course it started with freud, but it hasn't been cast aside, it's still quite valid in modern psychology. "The denial of death" was written within the last ten years, and it makes strong use of the phenomenon. And not all freud was nonsense. |
There is nothing scientific about the "oedipal" concept, and attempting to link that to perfection is even less scientific.
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9. Not *everyone* is miserable and dead, and the problem over population is that there is not enough space for all humans, so to that, genocide is a solution that works well. |
*shrug* In which case, it must be a good solution.
Unless having enough space for everyone isn't really your goal. Like i said - in real life, you can't consider things in a vacuum. If your only goal is to reduce the population, then genocide is a great solution.
But that's not your only goal. Preventing overpopulation is just part of a larger scheme.
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10. I don't claim to be an expert, but I had thought that some prominent scientists of the time had great doubts about his ability to achieve it. |
I have no doubt that there were scientists somewhere in the world who doubted it. Scientists are a diverse group.
And i'd be interested to know who these "prominent scientists" were.
Fact: from the knowledge of the time, you can (and many people did) show that electric lighting is both possible and practical. That's just a fact; it wasn't the stone age, they knew enough by that point. |
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Lester
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Joined: 08 Dec 2006
Posts: 4650
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| Posted: Sat Feb 03, 2007 1:52 pm Post subject: |
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1. Not at all, Britain, Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, all still technically ruled by a monarch, if all of those countries were to suddenly sink into the sea you cannot claim that the U.S. would survive in it's current form, and they are just the ones ruled by the Queen, there are lots of other monarchies out there. If your requirement for a stand alone economy is that it survive in a vaccuum, or with only countries that are also of it's methodology, then capitalism does not fit the bill.
2. The exact same reason, rationality isn't, and shouldn't, be the only thing your actions are based on.
3. If you are working towards something, and you want it to occur, then it is your goal, whether or not you know it's impossible.
4. Ok, lets compare the 20th century, to say, the 14th, how many world wars did the 14th have? how many nuclear explosions? Even if the black plague was around then we have AIDS in the poorer countries that kills a thousand people a day, A DAY! Things aren't getting better at all.
5. There is an almost continual supply of wage slaves, they sign up to have the privelege, with regular slaves you need to keep them long enough to breed, or buy them, but thats a whole lot more expensive than paying 50cents a week.
6. Ahh, but if you are all-knowledgeable you can do impossible things, if you are all powerful you cannot, because all powerful just means the ability to do everything.
7. Well you see I don't quite remember it, but it was good, and along the lines of "The best possible situation for everybody."
8. Take it up with Ernest Becker(pulitzer prize winner for the book I mentioned) otto rank and all those other obvious fools....(heavy sarcasm)
9. We're looking at a single problem, by itself, and yes it's a solution that works well, but it is not a *good* solution, because your killing mass amounts of people. Good and efficient are different things, you must be able to agree on this, the difference is that "works well" is treating the problem in a vaccuum, and "good" is not.
10. Then why were there dissenters? It was not tried and true science at the time, it was somewhat mainstream maybe, but certainly not proven. |
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exton
Forum Elder
Joined: 13 Dec 2006
Posts: 4218
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| Posted: Sat Feb 03, 2007 8:50 pm Post subject: |
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| Lester wrote: | | 1. Not at all, Britain, Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, all still technically ruled by a monarch, if all of those countries were to suddenly sink into the sea you cannot claim that the U.S. would survive in it's current form, and they are just the ones ruled by the Queen, there are lots of other monarchies out there. If your requirement for a stand alone economy is that it survive in a vaccuum, or with only countries that are also of it's methodology, then capitalism does not fit the bill. |
Monarchy and capitalism are not mutually exclusive. In fact, all the countries you cite are capitalistic.
Additionally, the countries you cite are only "monarchies" as a matter of tradition. In actual practice, they are no such thing.
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2. The exact same reason, rationality isn't, and shouldn't, be the only thing your actions are based on. |
Why?
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3. If you are working towards something, and you want it to occur, then it is your goal, whether or not you know it's impossible. |
Ah, but if you don't know that something is impossible, then it's no longer insane to try to do it.
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4. Ok, lets compare the 20th century, to say, the 14th, how many world wars did the 14th have? how many nuclear explosions? Even if the black plague was around then we have AIDS in the poorer countries that kills a thousand people a day, A DAY! Things aren't getting better at all. |
Hah! You claim there was less violence in the 20th century than before?
Not at all. The 20th century just had better tools with which to do violence.
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5. There is an almost continual supply of wage slaves, they sign up to have the privelege, with regular slaves you need to keep them long enough to breed, or buy them, but thats a whole lot more expensive than paying 50cents a week. |
Perhaps you forgot about the ships that brought slaves over from africa at regular intervals.
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6. Ahh, but if you are all-knowledgeable you can do impossible things, |
That does not follow.
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if you are all powerful you cannot, because all powerful just means the ability to do everything. |
"Everything" is not the same as "only that which is possible". By definition, there is nothing that is impossible for someone who is omnipotent.
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7. Well you see I don't quite remember it, but it was good, and along the lines of "The best possible situation for everybody." |
Not everyone would agree that that is perfection. That is, in fact, a completely arbitrary definition of perfection.
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8. Take it up with Ernest Becker(pulitzer prize winner for the book I mentioned) otto rank and all those other obvious fools....(heavy sarcasm) |
A stupid idea is a stupid idea, regardless of who believes it.
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9. We're looking at a single problem, by itself, and yes it's a solution that works well, but it is not a *good* solution, because your killing mass amounts of people. |
That's assuming that you have the additional goal of NOT killing large amounts of people.
If you don't care about killing large amounts of people (as would be the case if population reduction were your ONLY goal), then genocide is a good solution.
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Good and efficient are different things, you must be able to agree on this, the difference is that "works well" is treating the problem in a vaccuum, and "good" is not. |
Not quite. See above.
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10. Then why were there dissenters? It was not tried and true science at the time, it was somewhat mainstream maybe, but certainly not proven. |
Of course it was tried and true! They had electricity by then, you know. You know what happens when you put a lot of electricity through a thin metal (or carbon) wire?
It glows.
That was obvious by that time.
And that's to speak nothing of gas disharge tubes and electrical arcs, both of which existed at the time, and both of which produce light.
There will always be dissenters for any concept, regardless of how obviously true it is. |
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Lester
Forum Elder
Joined: 08 Dec 2006
Posts: 4650
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| Posted: Mon Feb 05, 2007 2:10 pm Post subject: |
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1. Still if your argument that communes can only exist because of some fundamental aspect of capitalism allows them too is valid, then the other argument is valid too, you cannot discredit one without the other.
2. Because the human beings greatness comes from the blending of both the emotional and rational, but thats just my view, how about because if rationality was the only thing that drove us there would be no love, or competition, or happiness, or imagination, or joy, or hope, we would become as robots, but worse, because we would be less intelligent and weaker.
3. but you can strive for the impossible knowing it's impossibility and knowing that you can make things better by striving, like i said before.
4. And we used them!! We could have used swords and clubs and longbows but we didn't! we opted for the most destruction and pain possible(btw, better tools does equal more violence, because you can do more in less time) just like all the other ages past! Society is morally stagnant.
5. Still had to pay for them...
6. You know *how* to do them, the definition of power is along the lines of "the ability to do something", therefore it must be possible for that thing to be done for you to use the power to do it.
7. Thats the best possible situation for everyone, basically it means whatever you want you get, how is that not everyone idea of perfection?
8. These are experts in their field! Would next you like to critisize newton on his laws??
9. I think you and i have a different definition of 'good', mine include morality.
10. Ahhh, I checked wikipedia, what I think the dissenters were critisizing him on was the ability of the light bulbs to have a long enough life to be used commericially. |
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