I agree. I am fine with you being somewhat harsh. If I were to take offence, I should not be willing to converse in controversial discussion. I would like to ask you, would you exterminate Nazis? Are you willing to eat meat, and if you are, are you willing to be the one that brings the axe down on that breathing mammal(in a theoretical scenario whereby this is still used, which it is sometimes). It's natural to feel both guilt and a compulsion to kill it. You are an omnivorous mammal. Omnivorous mammals kill or scavenge. We do both the latter and the former. I am trying to say that you are raised in a society whereby certain things have been presented as right or wrong, maybe not so black and white, but similar. Tribes in Papua New Guinea (Praying I spelt that correctly, my WiFi is dead inside and can't run two tabs) cannibalize. That is wrong for you, but right for them. In this very way, the agency behind Hitler's actions were quite moral by your standards, quite contrary to the actual action. He thought he was inadvertently saving the world from degeneration into a lower race. I in no way support Hitler's actions, nor do I oppose their agency. I would simply like to say that what is white for you, may be black for me and you'd see me covered in the blackness that others may see as light, which others may see as grey. You only say what you do because of your upbringing, so is challenging this not helping us see the world from other viewpoints? Is that not the sole purpose of websites such as this one? Does the introduction of controversy suddenly break the need to see other viewpoints, or does it strengthen it? In my opinion, the latter.Hereandnow wrote: ↑February 15th, 2018, 10:43 amSo I'm a little hard on him, you think? FIrst, I think not about the question here but the agency behind it. Does it never occur to TigerNinja that, what, "disposing" of the less endowed, the unwanted, was what they did at Auschwitz? Tiger, it was pretty clear, was not just playing devil's advocate. Second, we live in a time of rising alt-right thinking and power, and this is makes such questions more than just theoretical. In short, I feel Tiger was due a mild censure along with a rebuttal.Steve3007;
I disagree with this way of dealing with TigerNinja's questions. If an idea is good, then it is often strengthened by being challenged and being seen to meet that challenge. TigerNinja has challenged an idea.
What Use Are Those To Society That Cannot Aid It?
- TigerNinja
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Re: What Use Are Those To Society That Cannot Aid It?
- Sy Borg
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Re: What Use Are Those To Society That Cannot Aid It?
What of a time when most jobs are automated and most people are being looked after by machines powered by corporate AI? The first "use" of humans will be as consumers, although that will depend on the extent to which a UBI is instituted (the poor can't readily spend).
Even that arrangement looks unsustainable. If intelligent machines are running everything there would seem to come a point where the concept of economics will either go or radically change. What use will human beings be per se, then? All these people simply living for the sake of living without making themselves useful. Unacceptable! ;)
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Re: What Use Are Those To Society That Cannot Aid It?
Well, what can I say: A little theory can be a dangerous thing.TigerNinja
Fair play. I have no significant use as of now, although the majority of the population is useless as a single unit. I am part of a community, which combines to make a larger community, which means that as a collective, I am part of a well oiled machine that is much more use than me or another. Its the people who can't or won't contribute to this collective at all that I am talking about. Despite this, if everyone took more than they provided, society would collapse, so clearly society is doing something right at the moment. I would also like to take a moment to say that the care for other beings is only a product of conditioning. We, naturally, only care about our families, our mate, our friends (allies in gaining food, water and other resources) and our children. All evolutionary advantages, however conditioning from a society that heavily falls on Judea- Christian moral values results in yours beliefs of compassion and the like which is the sole reason you think that they should be evaluated to see if they are sufficiently human. We are solely doing the natural human instinct to look out for myself and anyone else that carries my genes.
Collective? The collective is just an abstraction: it is an aggregate, a community, a social corporation. How is it that you think by using the term 'collective' you have somehow transcended the individual? Surely you realize that fascists throughout history have thought exactly like this: we have a grand idea to implement and so there will be millions sent to gulags to to make it possible. I guess you think it's okay as long as you are lucky enough not to throw into a slave camp. This is thinking is deplorable.
Part of a well oiled machine that is much more than you? It being a machine, it has a purpose, a function. What would this be, to serve itself? No? Then whom, if not people like you, me and everyone ?
Conditioning? But then, how do we critique conditioning? Or evolutionary advantages? If an evolutionary advantage told you to jump off a bridge, would you? Look, perhaps it is true that beneath this veneer of conscious living, there are currents of conditioning bubbling forth in decision making, but that is not how possibilities reveal themselves. One does not ask, how does my conditioning direct me?" One asks, what should one do regardless? It is called existential freedom (as opposed to causal freedom, which is nonsense).
One does not experience compassion because one is exposed to Christian values. Christian values were conceived in the first place because compassion was already there as a possibility, and Christianity came along and gave it religion.
Genes? You need to put down the Richard Dawkins just long enough see that you are NOT a bunch of genes trying to survive and procreate. It is not that this is not true; it is rather that such thinking abstracts from the full reality of a human being by focusing on a single notion: evolutionary requirement. Evolution has nothing whatever to say about the possibilities built into the world that survival and reproduction brought into being.
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Re: What Use Are Those To Society That Cannot Aid It?
Even someone with a very low IQ can be useful in some way to his friends and family. And certainly he is useful to his caseworker --> he provides him with a means of making a living!
What would happen to all of the therapists, caretakers, psychologists, judges, family law practitioners, policemen, soldiers, etc, etc if there were no generally useless people in the world? If everyone could aid society then many people would have to find new careers....
- JamesOfSeattle
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Re: What Use Are Those To Society That Cannot Aid It?
I think I was introduced to this concept by E.O. Wilson in his book “The Meaning of Human Existence”, which I highly recommend as a fairly short, easy read. He recognized that natural selection tends to favor the selfish individual within a group, but that groups with mostly unselfish individuals are favored over groups with mostly selfish individuals. The selfish tendencies still exist in all humans, but so do the cooperative tendencies, and culture plays a part in which tendencies are encouraged or discouraged.
So for myself, I would prefer to be in the more successful group, and so I encourage those within my group to be less selfish. While I can admire selflessness, I don’t require it of myself or others. Instead, adherence to certain basic rules works pretty well. The best one found so far is “Do unto others ...”. But policies which encourage selfishness in everyone are to be avoided.
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- TigerNinja
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Re: What Use Are Those To Society That Cannot Aid It?
Christian values brought it to a mainstream audience. You cannot deny that. I do not deny that to begin with there was a factor of compassion, however it was not prominent. Do you really think that if Christianity just brought it up there would be executions at the time and Jesus would have been a common event, barring his religious significance? Do you think that it would not have been out of the question for the crowds to have been cheering "Crucify him!"? I will put down the Richard Dawkins but I will maintain my firm belief that we have an innate and natural desire to survive. Fear and the like would otherwise be obsolete. I would just like to say, with a natural desire to survive, what, in the pure essence of it (unaffected by conditions and context), is wrong with being willing to sell someone else out for your own life. Many people would. It is purposeless to deny that most people would let someone else die for themselves without batting a blind eye. Most would feel guilt, but in reality, when push comes to shove, very few people would risk their lives for another's.Hereandnow wrote: ↑February 26th, 2018, 7:34 pmWell, what can I say: A little theory can be a dangerous thing.TigerNinja
Fair play. I have no significant use as of now, although the majority of the population is useless as a single unit. I am part of a community, which combines to make a larger community, which means that as a collective, I am part of a well oiled machine that is much more use than me or another. Its the people who can't or won't contribute to this collective at all that I am talking about. Despite this, if everyone took more than they provided, society would collapse, so clearly society is doing something right at the moment. I would also like to take a moment to say that the care for other beings is only a product of conditioning. We, naturally, only care about our families, our mate, our friends (allies in gaining food, water and other resources) and our children. All evolutionary advantages, however conditioning from a society that heavily falls on Judea- Christian moral values results in yours beliefs of compassion and the like which is the sole reason you think that they should be evaluated to see if they are sufficiently human. We are solely doing the natural human instinct to look out for myself and anyone else that carries my genes.
Collective? The collective is just an abstraction: it is an aggregate, a community, a social corporation. How is it that you think by using the term 'collective' you have somehow transcended the individual? Surely you realize that fascists throughout history have thought exactly like this: we have a grand idea to implement and so there will be millions sent to gulags to to make it possible. I guess you think it's okay as long as you are lucky enough not to throw into a slave camp. This is thinking is deplorable.
Part of a well oiled machine that is much more than you? It being a machine, it has a purpose, a function. What would this be, to serve itself? No? Then whom, if not people like you, me and everyone ?
Conditioning? But then, how do we critique conditioning? Or evolutionary advantages? If an evolutionary advantage told you to jump off a bridge, would you? Look, perhaps it is true that beneath this veneer of conscious living, there are currents of conditioning bubbling forth in decision making, but that is not how possibilities reveal themselves. One does not ask, how does my conditioning direct me?" One asks, what should one do regardless? It is called existential freedom (as opposed to causal freedom, which is nonsense).
One does not experience compassion because one is exposed to Christian values. Christian values were conceived in the first place because compassion was already there as a possibility, and Christianity came along and gave it religion.
Genes? You need to put down the Richard Dawkins just long enough see that you are NOT a bunch of genes trying to survive and procreate. It is not that this is not true; it is rather that such thinking abstracts from the full reality of a human being by focusing on a single notion: evolutionary requirement. Evolution has nothing whatever to say about the possibilities built into the world that survival and reproduction brought into being.
That is understandable. Is the fact that I embrace my natural instinct of self preservation that every creature has deplorable? One could say that your thinking is deplorable, due to you will to allow everyone to be at a further risk (in a hypothetical situation, we don't experience a significant one at the moment) at the cost of the few. If (we do not face this, someone will misinterpret this) we had to eliminate a few people to save the many, would it not be deplorable of you to let them live at the cost of the many? I would say so. If your family were among them and then you said that everyone apart from your family should die, that would not be deplorable. You are solely looking out for your family as everyone does. How do blood feuds come into existence then.
- Hereandnow
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Re: What Use Are Those To Society That Cannot Aid It?
Christian values brought it to a mainstream audience. You cannot deny that. I do not deny that to begin with there was a factor of compassion, however it was not prominent. Do you really think that if Christianity just brought it up there would be executions at the time and Jesus would have been a common event, barring his religious significance? Do you think that it would not have been out of the question for the crowds to have been cheering "Crucify him!"? I will put down the Richard Dawkins but I will maintain my firm belief that we have an innate and natural desire to survive. Fear and the like would otherwise be obsolete. I would just like to say, with a natural desire to survive, what, in the pure essence of it (unaffected by conditions and context), is wrong with being willing to sell someone else out for your own life. Many people would. It is purposeless to deny that most people would let someone else die for themselves without batting a blind eye. Most would feel guilt, but in reality, when push comes to shove, very few people would risk their lives for another's.
That is understandable. Is the fact that I embrace my natural instinct of self preservation that every creature has deplorable? One could say that your thinking is deplorable, due to you will to allow everyone to be at a further risk (in a hypothetical situation, we don't experience a significant one at the moment) at the cost of the few. If (we do not face this, someone will misinterpret this) we had to eliminate a few people to save the many, would it not be deplorable of you to let them live at the cost of the many? I would say so. If your family were among them and then you said that everyone apart from your family should die, that would not be deplorable. You are solely looking out for your family as everyone does. How do blood feuds come into existence then.//
Just do a little reading about cultures outside the influence of Christianity. Lots of compassion brought to the mainstream in many ways. It's absurd to think otherwise. Buddhists? Hindus? Druids? Ancient Greeks? Compassionate people did bad things? And?
This is not about selling someone out for your survival. This is about the annihilation of those who cannot aid society. Your words. And as for what many people would do, this reasoning is so bad it actually has a name: argumentum ad populum.
Deplorable?: see what I actually wrote. It has nothing to do with natural instinct and self preservation.
Eliminate a few to save the many? Since when is this about saving the many? Read your own post.
- TigerNinja
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Re: What Use Are Those To Society That Cannot Aid It?
At the (in my opinion) soon to come point whereby AI and other forms of machinery can outdo humans in every way, humans will effectively have no use. And there is in no way that we can just programme Asimov's laws, as there has to be so many things preceding that and simply saying "So long as it does not conflict with the other laws" is a bit of a problem. It is fine to have multiple functions running simultaneously, however there is the factor of making it explicit to the machine. If you ask a machine, "Get me to the airport as quick as possible", that wouldn't really work if you arrive covered in vomit with police helicopters flying overhead. Then you add, "without breaking traffic laws" and you arrive in prison for getting into a fight because your driving at 30 or so mph on a 60. Because of you uselessness of humans, they would then be quite irrelevant. The only relevance they would have is as the consumers, as you have said.Greta wrote: ↑February 26th, 2018, 6:34 pm The more I think about this question, the more I think it's an extremely important one for the future, cutting to the heart of the question of value.
What of a time when most jobs are automated and most people are being looked after by machines powered by corporate AI? The first "use" of humans will be as consumers, although that will depend on the extent to which a UBI is instituted (the poor can't readily spend).
Even that arrangement looks unsustainable. If intelligent machines are running everything there would seem to come a point where the concept of economics will either go or radically change. What use will human beings be per se, then? All these people simply living for the sake of living without making themselves useful. Unacceptable!
Eventually though, we will just all be lazy and pointless, as machines will have faculties beyond our own to make more machines better than we can design them ourselves. Then after that, although this may come across slightly drastic, there will be no remainder of humans. Maybe our buildings and the like, however machines will not be given the incentive to procreate that humans have. Despite this, in the words of Yuval Noah Harari, "We should not be thinking what humans with our minds would be doing, but what humans with mind beyond our own would be doing". We would have undoubtedly reached a different state of mind if we do eventually blend with machines, however if we split from each other, we will become obsolete and machines will become 'The New Human'. Despite this, with no incentive to procreate, nor our need of programming this in them, I doubt they will 'live' very long.
- TigerNinja
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Re: What Use Are Those To Society That Cannot Aid It?
I agree but i am only taking Christianity as an example, due to the average person knowing more about that than Ancient Greeks (I'm not doubting you, it's simply that I know little about the Ancient Greeks, Druids, or Hindus, however I know a fair bit about Buddhists, and there I agree with you). As said in my clarification, this hypothetical scenario is set in a society which can be as advanced in our own, but in such a state that resources are limited to the extent whereby there would be significant violent competition between groups, be it tribes or nations. What if essential resources such as food and water are limited? Should you let people go into poverty and find their own way or simply end their suffering so that you they wouldn't have to starve and be crippled into a slow death?Hereandnow wrote: ↑February 27th, 2018, 8:30 pm
Just do a little reading about cultures outside the influence of Christianity. Lots of compassion brought to the mainstream in many ways. It's absurd to think otherwise. Buddhists? Hindus? Druids? Ancient Greeks? Compassionate people did bad things? And?
This is not about selling someone out for your survival. This is about the annihilation of those who cannot aid society. Your words. And as for what many people would do, this reasoning is so bad it actually has a name: argumentum ad populum.
Deplorable?: see what I actually wrote. It has nothing to do with natural instinct and self preservation.
Eliminate a few to save the many? Since when is this about saving the many? Read your own post.
- Burning ghost
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Re: What Use Are Those To Society That Cannot Aid It?
Is society better served by high IQ rather than empathy? Does having a higher IQ make you morally superior? I would say no to both. Irrespective of the IQ issue there are certainly people in society that do not seem to contribute much. What is peculiar is that some of the biggest contributors to human culture and rationality were ridiculed and even condemned to death. We are not fit to judge the future course of human culture and the "should's" and "should not's."
I guess my question to you is how can we really measure "use" when we're all reasonably ignorant?
Finding a place for people of low IQ in society can be, and is, problematic. If we start saying that IQ is the only important characteristic of a human being I think we've some really deep issues that need to be addressed.
Take a brief look around this forum and you'll find examples of people with intelligence saying the most amoral and deplorable things. By the style they write it is clear enough to me they are far from being in the low IQ category, but I would say they are potentially very detrimental to social cohension - luckily not many people will take them seriously because ethese kind of places online are traps for the intellectually stunted and social exiles - be that due to age, political inclination, and/or naivety of youth.
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Re: What Use Are Those To Society That Cannot Aid It?
How do we judge? A person makes a mint selling sugar based products that are popular. As a wealthy person he uses, well, much more resources than a manual laborer. His products leads to various obesity related problems, etc. But he's a high IQ upper class guy. Is he 'aiding society'? however.TigerNinja wrote: ↑February 14th, 2018, 12:26 pm I understand I will offend a few people here. My apologies beforehand, but have an open mind when reading this. Let's look at physically incapable people with low IQs. They are unable to carry out manual labour and are also unable to make significant contributions. What they learn from the highly intelligent people that carry society is not applied and they are unable to make things for people to learn. They cannot aid society, and are simply limiting society by using resources yet being unable to return the favour. Be it working at McDonald's to running Apple to discovering the origin of the universe, all people are useful in some way, but at what point does the use that they give to a community, as small as a village or as big as a galaxy, become less than the resources they use?
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Re: What Use Are Those To Society That Cannot Aid It?
Good question, only I think it is pointed in the wrong direction. It is like worrying about the cost of burning a candle while burning gallons of fossil fuel.… at what point does the use that they give to a community, as small as a village or as big as a galaxy, become less than the resources they use?
What needs to be considered is how much is taken in order to provide. It may be that in an attempt to provide what is taken from us is an inhabitable planet. The crisis of global warming suggests that clearly we are not doing something right at the moment.… if everyone took more than they provided, society would collapse, so clearly society is doing something right at the moment.
Kant held as a basic moral tenet to regard human beings as ends in themselves. Their worth and value is in their being not in their being useful.
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Re: What Use Are Those To Society That Cannot Aid It?
But if not, what reason could machines have to sustain humans? Unless we discover, aside from moral reasons, a use for non-contributors, we may be doomed to extinction.
If we care about the preservation of the species, the non-contributors (or under-contributors) of today must show us how to survive as the non-contributors of the future.
Perhaps our future survival is couched in today’s consumerism. If consumers are not sustained, there would be a shortage of consumers.
The fewer consumers, the greater the overabundance of consumables.
The greater the overabundance, the fewer jobs needed to create products and services.
The fewer jobs, the fewer consumers. Ouch.
Why should non-contributors be given sustenance, you ask? Because non-contributors, if given money, can become consumers. Because consumerism doesn’t have to hurt so much.
Even with discretionary money in the hands of non-contributors, there still will be fewer consumers, but not as many fewer.
An overabundance of products and services will still exist, but not as severe an overabundance.
Fewer workers may be needed, but not as many fewer. Each worker will have to work hard enough to support himself as well as support non-contributors. That’s job security.
Non-contributors who are supported will be able to become consumers.
Because non-contributors, if given money, can become consumers.
The shortage of consumers can be ameliorated by giving new life to non-contributors as consumers.
Even with discretionary money in the hands of non-contributors, there still will be fewer consumers, but not as many fewer.
An overabundance of products and services will still exist...well, you can see where this goes.
Wait. How does this apply to our survival among machines that will have no sense of altruism?
Smart machines are efficient machines.
To maintain their efficiency, smart machines must continue to exist.
If there will be fewer users of machines (read fewer consumers), some machines will go idle (read some workers will lose their jobs).
If there will be fewer active smart machines, there will be, assuming equal efficiency among machines, less efficiency.
If there will be less efficiency, it will be because fewer smart machines exist.
If there will be fewer active smart machines, there will be less efficiency.
If there will be less efficiency, it will be because fewer smart machines exist.
Repeat ad nauseum.
But how smart will AI-driven machines be? Smart enough to recognize that their existence depends on users? Some might say yes. If that is so, we will not disappear from existence.
On the other hand, if the machines won’t be so smart, we should have little to fear, because semi-smart machines won’t usurp all our jobs.
Whew!
2023/2024 Philosophy Books of the Month
Mark Victor Hansen, Relentless: Wisdom Behind the Incomparable Chicken Soup for the Soul
by Mitzi Perdue
February 2023
Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature: How Civilization Destroys Happiness
by Chet Shupe
March 2023