Slutty Monarch explains Anarchy (with rebuttals)

[Foxwarrior]

Someday, ISP will explicitly define "right".

For what it's worth, I think most people use a definition closest to ISP's, which is why I think it's one of the stupidest words in the lexicon.

[Parthenon]

Is there a better (by which I mean has less connotations of being correct and morally good) word for 'rights' which gets across the idea that in some situations people have the legal and socially acceptable option to have sex with 8 year olds and there is nothing stopping them?

Because at the moment the conversation (apart from ISP) seems to be saying that a right to do something is exactly the same as nothing stopping you from doing something. Which to some extent is true but I'd like to keep my cognitive dissonance for a while longer.

[Username17]

I am proud defend a child's right not to be raped against you idiots who say "yes, you can get the right to rape a kid."

No. You aren't defending the rights of children to not be raped. Defending those rights requires the spreading of a legal framework and enforcement body that acknowledges and defends the rights of those children.

If you just tear down the state, then the fact that a non-zero number of parents will voluntarily consent to having their children be raped (or do the raping themselves) is the beginning and end of the discussion. The parents consent for the child to be raped, and then the child is raped.

Only when there is a higher authority that is capable of intervening on behalf of the child's interests is that loathsome practice removed or even hindered. And get this: there is no, and can be no higher authority than that which humanity creates for itself.

If you don't believe that the government should be able to force you to do things you don't want to do, then you don't believe that there should be anything stopping people from subjecting their children to sexual assault. Because a really large number of people do in fact want to have their children sexually assaulted, and the government (in the majority of countries where the government intervenes in such things) is the only agent that has the power to prevent it.

-Username17

[Whipstitch]

Re: Qatar. If what DSmattticus ssays is true, then it is incoherent to say that the gay dude's rights are being violated in that situation, because a right must be enforced to be "real". But it is clearly not incoherent to say rights are being violated in this example, or a billion others. Comparing arbitrary football rules to the right not to be raped or murdered just goe to show how far you folks have drifted from civilized thought. Hilarious.

Nah, you're just really stupid. We have international bodies like the UN which reflect common standards regarding human rights. Oftentimes these standards are violated. There's also positive and negative rights which people speak of when deciding what appropriate standards of behavior should be, but that's not the same thing as say, natural law.

And again, I'm not a moral relativist. I believe some things are wrong and some things are good and moral. These things often have rather little to do with what governments and society dictates is correct, as in your example.

[Username17]

Is there a better (by which I mean has less connotations of being correct and morally good) word for 'rights' which gets across the idea that in some situations people have the legal and socially acceptable option to have sex with 8 year olds and there is nothing stopping them?

Because at the moment the conversation (apart from ISP) seems to be saying that a right to do something is exactly the same as nothing stopping you from doing something. Which to some extent is true but I'd like to keep my cognitive dissonance for a while longer.

"Rights" are the "fundamental normative rules about what someone is allowed or owed". ISP gets sand in his vagina about moral relativism, but moral relativism has nothing to do with it. Moral Relativism is the claim that different people believing that different things are Good makes different things actually be Good. That is contentious, and things are better for the most part if we treat it as false. But if you are in a different culture or a different nation, the freedoms you have actually do change. That should be obvious.

What is Good may well be the same here or there, but in Saudi Arabia you actually do have the right to beat your wife without fear of legal repercussion until the domestic abuse ban kicks in later this week (in 2013!). That is because questions of Good are descriptive, while questions of Rights are normative.

The laws in Saudi Arabia are vile, and it is an evil country run by evil men. But the rights you have while in that country are simply the rights you actually have, not the rights you should have.

When someone says that their rights have been violated, they probably mean: There exists a legal or social framework that supports people being allowed or owed certain things, and these things were denied to that person. Note that the United Nations has a very broadly defined declaration of human rights, and thus it is quite possible for people to be appealing to the toothless UN declarations in spite of the local rights that they defacto actually have.

Questions about what people should do or what people should be free to do or what people should have are Ethical questions. Normative Ethics is the study of whether actions are right or wrong, rather than whether someone is in fact literally free to take the action in question (which is the "rights" that ISP is babbling and gibbering about). Yes, it is super confusing that it can be not right that you have the right to do things that aren't right because they violate peoples' rights. Because "right" has many meanings, and we haven't even gotten into "turning right" or "right wing".

-Username17

[Maj]

I don't think that anyone who believes in the concept of universal human rights can be called a relativist. The whole point of universal human rights is that being human transcends being from X country.

But ultimately, it doesn't matter that education or healthy food are rights if there is no way to tell the people who deny those things to others to STFU and GTFO.

Rights are important because they are memes that spur people to action, but without action, they're just Platonic ideals... Spineless dreams that mean nothing to the either the afflicted or the perpetrators.

[DSMatticus]

Is there a better (by which I mean has less connotations of being correct and morally good) word for 'rights' which gets across the idea that in some situations people have the legal and socially acceptable option to have sex with 8 year olds and there is nothing stopping them?

Because at the moment the conversation (apart from ISP) seems to be saying that a right to do something is exactly the same as nothing stopping you from doing something. Which to some extent is true but I'd like to keep my cognitive dissonance for a while longer.

I think you should give up your cognitive dissonance. Any mechanism you have that lets you say "I don't like rape" will let you say "I don't like people having the right to commit rape," and then you can acknowledge that in some countries people have the right to rape their wives and that that is terrible. Rape isn't bad because it's a violation of some right. Rape is bad because {other reasons}, and because it is bad we would prefer a framework of rights that includes "the right to not be raped."

1+1 = 2 regardless of whether someone somewhere declares that 1+1=3. It's essentially the same with the right not to be raped.

No, it isn't. When someone declares that if they put one apple and one apple together it becomes three apples, they still only have two apples. Even if everyone around them agrees that 1+1 should totally =3, when they look at the resulting number of apples it is still two. No consensus between individuals will change the fact that there are two apples. When your neighbor declares that he has the right to your things, whether or not he ends up with your things follows immediately from exactly that sort of consensus. You are claiming that the existence of (natural) rights is in the same class as a testable hypothesis. I am going to make you cash that check. What empirical test demonstrates the existence of a right?

You guys are all HARDCORE relativists and it's surprising to see so many in one place haha.

You do not know what that word means. When people say that people who believe in SOOOUUULLLSSS are idiots, that is not a claim derived from any relativistic framework. It is a question of testability. You believe in something that can't be demonstrated, tested, proven, and even if it was real would have no effect on the world unless everyone agreed it was real and agreed to abide by it. We do not have to go full relativism to make fun of you. We just have to point out you believe in something that is the philosophical equivalent of invisible, intangible fairies with no influence telling you how the world should be why-won't-you-listen-to-meeee-and-my-invisible-fairieeeess-guuuyyyysss-come-on!

[Kaelik]

Do you guys read moral philosophy and rights theory books? What philosophers and legal theorists have informed your opinions? Are there any non-relativists on the board? Just wondering about your intellectual backgrounds on this subject. You guys are all HARDCORE relativists and it's surprising to see so many in one place.

Do you read anything besides Natural Rights theorists? I am hard pressed to find any legal rights theorist who strongly advocates for the idea that legal rights necessarily have any link to "moral" rights.

I have however read and studied many natural rights theorists, and what you are talking about is sounding a hell of a lot like when you are saying rights, you are specifically talking about natural rights. Which is where the souls criticism comes from. Because as it turns out, natural rights are not real and are totally made up by people who believe in souls.

So to anyone who rejects supernatural mumbo jumbo, the idea that people have moral rights that exist outside consensus is in fact totally bullshit.

[infected slut princess]

So DSM thinks arithmetic is proven by empirical testing. That's a good one.

What empirical test demonstrates your claim that the only valid propositions are empirically testable? Uh oh.

[DSMatticus]

So DSM thinks arithmetic is proven by empirical testing. That's a good one.

It is empirically testable that one apple placed next to another apple is two apples. That is a test you can do, and the results are conclusive. Lots of math is just a description of observed events. Not even nearly all of it, but "counting apples" is firmly in that domain, and the only way to move that out of the realm of empiricism is a game of semantics ("what is two?") or to attack empiricism ("how can we, like, know anything, man?").

What empirical test demonstrates your claim that the only valid propositions are empirically testable? Uh oh.

Sure. You can throw up your hands and set fire to the concept of proof through observation. It rather reinforces our notion that your idea of the world is SOOOUUULLL bullshit, though, and involves you admitting that you'll believe whatever the fuck you want to believe evidence be damned. Which is... not surprising in the least. But that you are self-aware enough to own up to it is something else.

[hyzmarca]

I should point out that 1+1 = 2 is only true in one arbitrarily defined system of operations. There are other systems in which 1+1 = 3 is true and those systems are just as valid.

[Maj]

No. You shouldn't.

It's an analogy, not a literalism. And it's fucking annoying when people get so caught up in the analogy that they ignore/forget/distract from the fucking point.

[hyzmarca]

That wasn't an analogy, that was an example.

My point is that a-priori knowledge only works within the confines of arbitrary axioms. Axioms like the law of non-contradiction are useful, but not necessary. A and Not A is perfectly valid in a system of logic that doesn't use it.

[...You Lost Me]

hyzmarca don't do it. ISP is trying to redirect the conversation so he can strawman and call DSM/other people stupid more and not look as bad. We can't let him do that because then he'll post more dumb things later down the line.

For the good of the colony.

[hyzmarca]

hyzmarca don't do it. ISP is trying to redirect the conversation so he can strawman and call DSM/other people stupid more and not look as bad. We can't let him do that because then he'll post more dumb things later down the line.

For the good of the colony.

Ah yes. For the Good of the Colony.

Without government where will your health care come from? Tell me that, ISP.

[DSMatticus]

I should point out that 1+1 = 2 is only true in one arbitrarily defined system of operations. There are other systems in which 1+1 = 3 is true and those systems are just as valid.

1+1=3 in infinitely many systems where those symbols mean different things, but that is exactly as interesting as there being infinitely many languages in which this sentence orders a cheeseburger at a restaurant. 1+1=3 in infinitely many systems which may be internally consistent but do a piss poor job of mapping to anything that actually ever happens. Internal consistency is not the thing that makes a system valuable - scientific models live and die by their predictive and explanatory power, and mathematics is not actually any different. 1+1=2 will forever be in a different class of statements than 'people have souls/intangible magic rights', because the particular concepts of quantity being described by that statement can be demonstrated and observed, while souls/magic rights cannot be demonstrated at all.

hyzmarca don't do it. ISP is trying to redirect the conversation so he can strawman and call DSM/other people stupid more and not look as bad. We can't let him do that because then he'll post more dumb things later down the line.

To be fair, it's a derail that would be way more interesting than the original conversation. ISP has made it abundantly clear at this point that he is an intellectually dishonest dickbag and his only further on topic contributions will be a continuation of the "I'm pretending not to understand the distinction between rights and ethics so I can strawman you as pro-child rape" line of bullshit.

or your own proposition that the only valid propositions are empirically testable

Here's a question: if X has no observable influence on the universe, in what way is the statement "X exists" different from the statement "X does not exist?" What consequences does one being true have that the other does not? What meaning is there in the truth of one statement compared to the truth of the other?

Now, you are stupid for asserting as true a claim that you have no reason to believe as true other than your personal desire for it to be true. The law of non-contradiction leads to a more powerful explanatory model, while the only benefit anyone receives from acknowledging that rights exist independently is that some people will feel better in their hearts, tummies, and minds. But the most damning criticism of your belief is that you have already resigned yourself to the nursing home that the god of the gaps argument goes to die - you are asserting a claim that is untestable because it has no consequences. Not only is the world exactly the same if you are right as if you are wrong, but the debate about whether you can be right at all is nontrivial - in what sense does something exist when it is incapable of interacting in anyway with anything else in the set of things that exist?

[Username17]

Actually, systems where 1 + 1 =/= 2 are quite useful and have real world applications. In the world of vectors, 1 + 1 generally equals about 1.41. There's a lot of times in which adding two things together does not give you twice the observable effect. Speed, distance, and other physical properties often add less than linearly. And of course, in truth logic, 1 + 1 == 1, which again has real world demonstrable applications.

So I would say that there are many important and valid systems where 1 + 1 =/= 2. You can empirically demonstrate the real world equivalents of those systems and confirm that you do in fact get a number less than 2. It's also quite easy to show real world situations wherein adding one to one gets you four (thanks power rules!).

But the natural rights that ISP is talking about have no consequences or real world equivalents. Worse still, they are incoherent and stupid. He has already made claim that you have a natural right to own property outside of a social or legal framework, which doesn't even make sense. Ownership not being a real property of people or things and only existing as a fiction within legal or social frameworks.

-Username17

[infected slut princess]

Oh come on.

You are giving me a hard time for not replying to every single thing people say. But realistically there are a whole bunch of you saying a lot of stuff I disagree with, and I can't answer everything. Besides, you guys don't reply to everything i've said either.

I have to pick and choose. I am getting some enjoyment out of the discussion though, so I am trying to continue it in a limited way.

And... So what? You should be HAPPY that you get the last word on most things and can all circle jerk together about how dumb you all think I am like a bunch of retards.

There are basically no premises we seem to agree on. Our epistemological and ethical ideas are clearly very different at the most foundational levels. The epistemological issue is NOT an unrelated detour if, as DSMatticus and the rest of you claim, ethical propositions cannot be justified anymore than the arbitrary rules of football.

Both our sides have a lot of weighty philosophical tradition behind them. That's why it is an interestng discussion (though it's weird that this was a thread about leaks and spying at one point.)
But since we disagree on EVERYTHING, and I can't spend the rest of my life going through some of the biggest philosophical questions of the last few thousand years on a fucking internet message board full of jerks (including myself), it should be cool with you guys if I DONT reply to everything. So be cool with it.
-----------------------------

So anyway, I read the latest responses today and will get a reply done to SOME of the issues after the weekend.

In the meantime, you guys can add interesting discussion, or maybe you would rather just sit around acting like like basement-dwelling unemployed bums who complain about how I don't dedicate the rest of my life aruging with you.

TL;DR veresion: Quit your bitching You Lost Me.

[Kaelik]

There are basically no premises we seem to agree on. Our epistemological and ethical ideas are clearly very different at the most foundational levels. The epistemological issue is NOT an unrelated detour if, as DSMatticus and the rest of you claim, ethical propositions cannot be justified anymore than the arbitrary rules of football.

This is the actual content in your post.

Oh come on.

You are giving me a hard time for not replying to every single thing people say. But realistically there are a whole bunch of you saying a lot of stuff I disagree with, and I can't answer everything. Besides, you guys don't reply to everything i've said either.

I have to pick and choose. I am getting some enjoyment out of the discussion though, so I am trying to continue it in a limited way.

And... So what? You should be HAPPY that you get the last word on most things and can all circle jerk together about how dumb you all think I am like a bunch of retards.

Both our sides have a lot of weighty philosophical tradition behind them. That's why it is an interestng discussion (though it's weird that this was a thread about leaks and spying at one point.)
But since we disagree on EVERYTHING, and I can't spend the rest of my life going through some of the biggest philosophical questions of the last few thousand years on a fucking internet message board full of jerks (including myself), it should be cool with you guys if I DONT reply to everything. So be cool with it.
-----------------------------

So anyway, I read the latest responses today and will get a reply done to SOME of the issues after the weekend.

In the meantime, you guys can add interesting discussion, or maybe you would rather just sit around acting like like basement-dwelling unemployed bums who complain about how I don't dedicate the rest of my life aruging with you.

TL;DR veresion: Quit your bitching You Lost Me.

This is the part where you whine incessently about how you just don't have enough time to respond to content.

If you are going to whine about how you don't have enough time to respond to content, shoot for a ratio of content to noise somewhere at least north of 50%, instead of 20%.

[infected slut princess]

Kaelik molested me when I was a little kid.
_________________

Collectively, I think your gang's content value is about 8%, and bitching that I don't reply to everything adn that I'm dumb and crazy and weird strawmen is about 92%.
_________________


hilariously Kaelik's post complaining about my post complaining about other people complaining has zero content, whereas he even thought my useless post had some content. What a guy.

[The Great Fence Builder Speaks]
Please do not triple post.
[/TGFBS]

[Kaelik]

hilariously Kaelik's post complaining about my post complaining about other people complaining has zero content, whereas he even thought my useless post had some content. What a guy.

I'm not complaining about having enough time. So if I waste my time, it isn't hypocritical.

[The Great Fence Builder Speaks]
Edited out reference to triple post now that it is gone.
[/TGFBS]

[infected slut princess]

Right now I am doing something else and cannot take 20-30 minutes to write a post about the real discussion. I can give it 2-3 minutes here and there between something else I'm doing, to write a little bullshit post to let you know I still love you. I wrote that earlier useless post while I was eating a meal so at that moment I "had time" to do it. Since, like you say, it has basically no content it was fast to write it. Why does everything have to be so grim with you.

[Kaelik]

Why does everything have to be so grim with you.

What the fuck does that even mean?

[...You Lost Me]

Dear lord jesus, ISP, if you only have 2-3 minutes, don't waste them posting useless mudslinging that isn't actually related to the content of the argument.

I'm still about 99% sure your nonsense about algebra was a strawman, so feel free to prove me wrong by not actually going off topic.

[DSMatticus]

DSMatticus and the rest of you claim, ethical propositions cannot be justified anymore than the arbitrary rules of football.

No one has mentioned ethics except to remind you that discussions of rights and ethics are separate things, something you are having a massively difficult time understanding. I don't think you really know what moral relativism is, because you are fuck-off terrible at spotting it.

Right now I am doing something else and cannot take 20-30 minutes to write a post about the real discussion.

No one is putting you on a timer and bitching at you for not responding enough. People are bitching at you because you are making posts, but aren't using them to respond to anyone's arguments and instead are doing your goddamn best to redirect the conversation somewhere else entirely. I'm going to remind you that this is from my very first post on the topic:

If you happen to like some particular arbitrary rights framework (for example, because you are SOOOUUULLLSSS idiot), anarchy fails spectacularly on that front. Anarchy can't guarantee everyone has the rights you think they should have, because it definitionally depends on the exertion of force from many, many different parties with no common motivation.

I put you up to the task of explaining how anarchy is supposed to defend the framework of rights you personally believe is valid in my very first post. Frank's done it at least twice. I don't know where else it's come up.

Now, I (and everyone else, really) also called you stupid for believing rights objectively exist, and you chose to focus on that. And then we all learned you don't know what moral relativism is, don't understand the distinction between rights and ethics, and will enthusiastically embarrass yourself on both of those fronts rather than talk about how anarchy is supposed to do the things you want to happen. But hell, if you're pressed for time and want to narrow the conversation to the juicy bits, that's great. Let's do that!

You believe that there exists a framework of rights which is objectively valid. How does {your brand of anarchy goes here} guarantee that those rights are respected, relative to competing social structures? Voila.