Explain yourself
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@Jaloopa said in Explain yourself:
@Polygeekery said in Explain yourself:
Pro-2A
What's that?
Right to bear arms (own guns).
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@Dragnslcr said in Explain yourself:
often calling it "God's will"
Apparently they haven't read Job.
Job 10
13 “But this is what you concealed in your heart,
and I know that this was in your mind:
14 If I sinned, you would be watching me
and would not let my offense go unpunished.
15 If I am guilty—woe to me!
Even if I am innocent, I cannot lift my head,
for I am full of shame
and drowned in[a] my affliction.
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@Polygeekery said in Explain yourself:
"There ought to be a law" my screaming reply is "No, there fucking shouldn't be"
I find that there are good values, like treating people decently, that you'd be hard pressed to come up with a law for. Which is why I struggle when people protest issues that surround behavior and not rights.
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@pydsigner said in Explain yourself:
I believe in the death penalty for murder.
I don't believe that another person has the right to end someone's life. No matter what the other person has done. Because you are no better than them. Obviously war is different.
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@izzion said in Explain yourself:
my view point would be that the balance between a service provider and a potential customer should be in favor of "the service provider has the right to refuse service to anyone." To me, it's the same philosophy as the fact that a privately owned clothing store could refuse to sell to anyone who came in wearing a fur coat, because the owners believed in PETA.
Without going down to the
, do you think that should be limited to avoid e.g. a small community effectively ostracizing someone (if the only grocery in a 20 mi radius doesn't want to serve you, you're royally fucked), or that free market, movement etc. will take care of that (e.g. in that case you simply move elsewhere)?
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@Jaloopa said in Explain yourself:
you mean you are in favour of not legislating against things that you personally think are wrong?
That, by the way, is the essence of libertarianism.
@Jaloopa said in Explain yourself:
It doesn't help that being socially left isn't necessarily aligned with being economically left
Which means that there may be a better way of thinking about this than left and right. There's a scale cato.org uses with two axes: one for personal freedom and one for economic freedom.
@Dragnslcr said in Explain yourself:
Have you not paid any attention to the Republicans trying to legislate morality for the past several decades?
Both parties here do that. They just have different views on what is moral.
@xaade said in Explain yourself:
Obviously cash or even goods in lieu of cash does not solve the problem.
That's because cash or goods in lieu of cash are not wealth, they are income. Cash does not become wealth until the recipient manages not to spend it all.
@Jaloopa said in Explain yourself:
Drug use is one thing I would argue causes more societal harm due to being illegal than intrinsically.
Also, drug use was legal here until roughly 100 years ago.
@Polygeekery said in Explain yourself:
Pro-gay marriage (those fuckers should be just as miserable as straight folks)
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@Jaloopa said in Explain yourself:
@Polygeekery said in Explain yourself:
Pro-2A
What's that?
It has already been answered, but it is shorthand for "Pro-Second Amendment".
Shorthand fails when you have to explain it though, so I should have just said "Pro-Second Amendment". :)
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@pydsigner said in Explain yourself:
I believe in the death penalty for murder.
Not to start a flamewar, but I feel I should expound on what I said earlier about being anti-death penalty.
I am against the death penalty for three reasons:
First, our justice system is not perfect and mistakes are made. Once you execute a person, you cannot do anything to rectify that mistake. It is too permanent. If we could say with 100% certainty that person is guilty, I would be OK with it. But we cannot.
Second, it is typically more expensive to execute a person than it is to keep them in prison for life. Due to appeals processes and everything else involved in it, it is usually just cheaper to give them life in prison. IMHO, this is also a worse punishment. As an atheist, I believe that once they are dead their suffering and punishment is over. It is more of a punishment in my mind to keep them in prison for life.
Third, it is not a deterrent to crime. It just isn't. No one would be on the precipice of killing another person and think, "Wait, I could end up getting the chair for this" and then going on about their merry way as a model citizen. If it were a deterrent, I would likely rethink my earlier stances. I cannot say that I would change them, but I would definitely reconsider their weighting if it could be proven that it would deter other murders.
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@remi
I think, relative to the court cases that generated the furor in the United States, the "only grocery in a 20 mile radius" narrative is a strawman -- in my opinion, the facts surrounding the case support an interpretation that the plaintiffs were deliberately seeking out Christian businesses to "destroy" over their "intolerance". And I think it's ludicrous to assert that they were doing it only because they just wanted a wedding cake -- why would anyone who wants a perfect wedding memory seek to compel baker (who is, in effect, an artist, and thus likely to generate work product that is of lower quality if they're being forced to do something they don't agree with) to generate work for them, when there are other available vendors in their area? (Similarly the cases surrounding wedding photographers, etc)It's a sticky issue, especially in the United States and our history of Jim Crow laws and other discrimination / racism, whether state encouraged or otherwise. But those cases look and feel like bad case law to me, in that they created a government interest in anti-discrimination when it wasn't necessary, as there were other ways the solution could have been solved (e.g. another nearby bakery or photographer that would have served the plaintiff).
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@izzion I know it's a charged issue in the US, and while I am not aware of the details of specific cases, I understand that the cases that reached the courts (or at least the papers) were often partly engineered, as you say.
Still, since you stated your opinion as a wider moral framework than a single case, and since that's what this thread is about, I am genuinly interested in your overall attitude on that discrimination vs. individual freedom.
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@izzion said in Explain yourself:
in my opinion, the facts surrounding the case support an interpretation that the plaintiffs were deliberately seeking out Christian businesses to "destroy" over their "intolerance".
I don't know a huge amount about the case so I won't say you're wrong but it's entirely possible they'd heard this baker was the best around and had their hearts set in him. Either way, I agree that prosecuting the baker to force them to provide a service was wrong. If I were a cake maker I wouldn't want to have to make a cake saying God hates fags
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@Polygeekery said in Explain yourself:
First, our justice system is not perfect and mistakes are made. Once you execute a person, you cannot do anything to rectify that mistake. It is too permanent. If we could say with 100% certainty that person is guilty, I would be OK with it. But we cannot.
I believe this is why it was outlawed in the UK because there were cases where it is was known someone was hanged for a crime they didn't commit after they were capitally punished.
Other than my moral convictions on the issue that is for me the biggest "practical" reason for want of a better word or phrase.
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@remi
My overall attitude would default to "customers and vendors should both have the right to refuse entering into business with each other".And, like all things real life, it's more complicated than a simple pithy statement in reality :) If you could show me an actual case where some common good or service was literally only available from a single provider without a severe hardship for the potential customer, then I would be inclined to feel that vendor shouldn't be able to refuse customers without an exceptional reason (e.g. allowing Typhoid Mary to swim in your pool would cause a serious threat to your other customers). And the line would be even further in favor of the potential customer in cases where the good or service was necessary for medical / life reasons.
But if it's a "want", or it's readily serviced by other vendors that the potential customer has easy access to (weddingcakes.com catering or another jewelry store or whatever), then the vendor's preference to exclude a customer should be honored. And said excluded customer should have the right to encourage other customers to refuse to do business with the vendor (a boycott), but should not have the right to use the "guns" of government sanctions to forcibly shut the business down.
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on the death penalty, I think it comes down to people valuing different aspects of the criminal justice system. I see it as a balance between punishment, deterrent, protecting the public and rehabilitation. I value rehab and protection highest, and death or life with no parole are admissions that we don't think rehab is possible
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@Jaloopa While I don't agree with you I see what you are getting at.
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@izzion said in Explain yourself:
my view point would be that the balance between a service provider and a potential customer should be in favor of "the service provider has the right to refuse service to anyone."
In this case, I think it's not even clear what a liberal / libertarian viewpoint should be. You could argue that everyone should have the right to refuse service, or you could argue that giving people the right to refuse service based on very personal choices of the other individual undermines that other individual's civil rights.
Personally, I believe one of the biggest threats to civil rights to be powerful individuals or large groups of individuals who try to coerce other people into giving up their liberties. Maybe that threat is even bigger (and certainly more subtle) than the threat of the government outright restricting civil rights. Social pressure can be way more effective than oppression.
Anyway, this a perfect example why labels are mostly useless: Self-proclaimed libertarians might have completely different opinions on this important topic.
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@asdf I think he is making the argument if people can't be reformed then maybe the death penalty should be considering and even appropriate.
e.g. You aren't going to reform Doc Croc ...
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@antiquarian said in Explain yourself:
Both parties here do that. They just have different views on what is moral.
It's also incredibly difficult to separate constitutional principles from morality. You could argue that a constitution defines a common set of moral principles, and it's incredibly hard to think in two different sets of morals all the time, especially if one of them is a generalization of the other (constitutional principles and your personal beliefs, which I very much hope are compatible with the former).
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@lucas1 Either I accidentally replied to the wrong post, or you misread which post I was replying to.
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@asdf yes I misread, I jumped the gun. Sorry.
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@asdf said in Explain yourself:
It's also incredibly difficult to separate constitutional principles from morality.
Now that you mention it, neither party really cares too much about constitutional principles, unless the violation thereof goes against their respective agendas.
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Sure, the compass thing puts me in the green sector, but I consider myself to be unable to agree with the parties in there, partially because of their attitudes and "doing the right thing"-isms and authoritarian tendencies.
Liberal-libertarian-ish feels like what I could identify as, except my brand of libertarianism is a lot less extreme than the American one.
Personal freedom should be protected and where possible increased. I care about LGBT* matters, partially because they also affect me.
Competitiveness should be emphasized more than absolute freedom of the market. And providing opportunities to people should be emphasized more than "equal chances".
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@asdf said in Explain yourself:
other individual undermines that other individual's civil rights.
This would not be the case for a pure libertarian.
Simply because civil rights are not really constitutional. They inherently harm a person's rights to protect another person's rights. It becomes clear when "civil rights" create a false positive situation. You end up inverting the burden of proof. You refused service to a disorderly customer, who claims they were disorderly because they've been refused service. Now what?
It also ends up sometimes hurting the demographic it is supposed to protect. For example, affirmative action. With affirmative action in place, you're often forced to hire the first minority that shows up, rather than the most qualified minority. This is where the impact of hiring based on arbitrary traits rather than merit, not only negatively impacts the majority ethnic group, but similarly the minority group for the same reason, but to a lesser degree.
So, it's not even a good solution. It's just the best one we have.
I think this was a major pressure for reviewing the constitution, as suggested by Democrats during Obama. However, when the shoe was on the other foot, decided to point to the constitution in argument against Trump.
It's clear that rights-based law is most likely the best we can get, while it clearly also has flaws.
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@antiquarian said in Explain yourself:
Now that you mention it, neither party really cares too much about constitutional principles
Which is really sad.
This is also my biggest problem with the German Conservative party: They frequently author (mostly security) laws which they know or at least very much suspect are unconstitutional, just to see what they can get past our constitutional court. Or sometimes - even more malicious - to be able to enact a law until the constitutional court reaches a decision.* It's incredibly infuriating to see how our constitution is treated by self-proclaimed conservatives.
*In really outrageous cases, the court has the ability to issue preliminary orders against unconstitutional laws before a final verdict is reached. Fortunately.
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The problem I have with the Green Party In at Least the UK is they want to seem to want to tell people what entertainment people should watch in the evening. I think the entertainment is shit .. but I think that people want to watch it. There are other ridiculous policies but I think that one for me exemplifies their mentality.
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@aliceif said in Explain yourself:
Sure, the compass thing puts me in the green sector, but I consider myself to be unable to agree with the parties in there, partially because of their attitudes and "doing the right thing"-isms and authoritarian tendencies.
Yup, it's definitely meant to show general outlook, not which political party you agree with on every issue. Every political party will have some number of issues where the party policy is inconsistent with their general positions on the economic and social axes.
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@Dragnslcr said in Explain yourself:
Every political party will have some number of issues where the party policy is inconsistent with their general positions on the economic and social axes.
Well, yeah. That's the inherent problem with parties, and letting parties work together to create law.
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@xaade said in Explain yourself:
affirmative action
Which, BTW, I am a strong opponent of. Not only because I think it violates fundamental principles I believe in, but also for a more practical reason: It creates additional social tension and is therefore counterproductive if you're trying to solve the underlying problem (that people think it's okay to discriminate).
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@asdf said in Explain yourself:
They frequently author (mostly security) laws which they know or at least very much suspect are unconstitutional,
Honestly, I think 99% of our federal laws are only constitutional under a very broad reading of the Interstate Commerce clause (which really means they aren't at all, but no one will say so on pain of their preferred laws also being struck down).
@aliceif said in Explain yourself:
Competitiveness should be emphasized more than absolute freedom of the market.
I don't think the two are necessarily in conflict, but they appear to be because the current way we have corporations set up encourages scaling up. There are other ways to set the ground rules that wouldn't have that problem.
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@antiquarian said in Explain yourself:
Honestly, I think 99% of our federal laws are only constitutional under a very broad reading of the Interstate Commerce clause (which really means they aren't at all, but no one will say so on pain of their preferred laws also being struck down).
Well, to be fair, American federalism is way more extreme than anywhere else. If you suddenly adopted a narrow interpretation of the clause, the US would probably turn into something like the EU rather than continue to be a single governmental entity.
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@asdf said in Explain yourself:
If you suddenly adopted a narrow interpretation of the clause, the US would probably turn into something like the EU rather than continue to be a single governmental entity.
From what I've read, there was some disagreement about what the US was supposed to be, but what you mention was favored by one of the factions.
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@asdf said in Explain yourself:
@antiquarian said in Explain yourself:
Honestly, I think 99% of our federal laws are only constitutional under a very broad reading of the Interstate Commerce clause (which really means they aren't at all, but no one will say so on pain of their preferred laws also being struck down).
Well, to be fair, American federalism is way more extreme than anywhere else. If you suddenly adopted a narrow interpretation of the clause, the US would probably turn into something like the EU rather than continue to be a single governmental entity.
Waiting for "and this is bad because..." part.
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@xaade said in Explain yourself:
@Dragnslcr said in Explain yourself:
Every political party will have some number of issues where the party policy is inconsistent with their general positions on the economic and social axes.
Well, yeah. That's the inherent problem with parties, and letting parties work together to create law.
My Google-fu is weak on finding the exact quote, but it's something like "The only candidate that a person agrees with on every issue is themselves".
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@xaade said in Explain yourself:
Waiting for "and this is bad because..." part.
It's just really hard to understand from an European view point.
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@xaade said in Explain yourself:
Waiting for "and this is bad because..." part.
I'm not saying it's necessarily bad, I'm just saying that you should be careful what you wish for. If you think the social and political tension in your country is bad now, you should carefully consider whether you actually want it to be more federal than it already is.
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@asdf I'm not sure, but you may have misunderstood me to mean the opposite of what I meant to say.
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@xaade Maybe. I just opened my second beer.
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sixth. I have to deal with you idiots how do you think I feel ...
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@aliceif said in Explain yourself:
@xaade said in Explain yourself:
Waiting for "and this is bad because..." part.
It's just really hard to understand from an European view point.
It's our history.
The colonies simultaneously opposed England. As a matter of strength in unity, they created a single nation. We even debated at the time whether to give power, and to what degree, to a federal government at all. There was even opposition to creating a federal army, with some argument that state provided militias would be all we would ever need.
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My moral viewpoint is, to a certain degree, informed by my view of morality as a set of societal "best practices."
In programming, "best practices" are things we've learned to be good or bad ideas that aren't obvious because you can you can really only see the full ramifications over time periods as long as or longer than the life cycle of a single project. We have something very similar in social conduct. The human brain has an inherent grasp of the principle of cause and effect, but only over a fairly short term.
Step off a cliff, and you end up severely injured or dead. That's obvious. Do something that someone says is harmful, find out it's harmful, stop doing it, and then die of the consequences of it 30 years later? That's ridiculous... but it's exactly what happened to Leonard Nimoy, who died of smoking even though he quit decades ago!
There are some things that cause harm over long-term periods even though they don't appear to be harmful in the short term, so we are hard-pressed to learn about the problems they cause the normal way. Instead, we're left with "the wisdom of the ages," the observations of mankind over the course of centuries and millennia, memories passed down to us to help us from people who've lived long enough to observe cause and effect at that scale.
Frequently these observations come wrapped up in religion. Some people say "such-and-such is a sin because God revealed to us that it's a sin." Other people, who don't believe in that religion, say "that religion is false, therefore their morality is invalid and this thing they claim is a sin is harmless." I say that the second group is committing a serious fallacy. Morality can be (and frequently is) valid completely independent of the validity of the trappings in which it is presented.
(Will add more later. Gotta leave now to catch a plane.)
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@masonwheeler said in Explain yourself:
My moral viewpoint is, to a certain degree, informed by my view of morality as a set of societal "best practices."
While I don't completely disagree with the view you express in your post, I want to point out that the above can be dangerous if you don't carefully question whether the conventions you observe actually are best practices or rather nonsensical or even unjust.
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@masonwheeler said in Explain yourself:
Other people, who don't believe in that religion, say "that religion is false, therefore their morality is invalid and this thing they claim is a sin is harmless." I say that the second group is committing a serious fallacy. Morality can be (and frequently is) valid completely independent of the validity of the trappings in which it is presented.
This is kind of my stance on sex before marriage, and there is some weak evidence for it. The most simple to observe is the increase in divorce. The next, the increase of spousal abuse where the woman is the abuser.
A lot of this is equally due to the social liberty we've granted, and the softening of the stigma of divorce. However, I think having multiple partners during marriage weakens the subsequent bond to the next person.
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@asdf said in Explain yourself:
@masonwheeler said in Explain yourself:
My moral viewpoint is, to a certain degree, informed by my view of morality as a set of societal "best practices."
While I don't completely disagree with the view you express in your post, I want to point out that the above can be dangerous if you don't carefully question whether the conventions you observe actually are best practices or rather nonsensical or even unjust.
We can get really good results if we enslave the poor, force them into education we pick for them, and force them into labor adequate to their needs.
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@xaade said in Explain yourself:
The next, the increase of spousal abuse where the woman is the abuser.
I would argue that there is no increase whatsoever, it's just that it's either never been viewed as an actual problem in the past or that the problem has been downplayed due to the belief in traditional gender roles.
Back to the main point of your post: There is evidence that there is a correlation between the number of partners and the likelihood that a relationship will succeed, but I'm not entirely convinced that there is a causal relationship between the two.
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@asdf said in Explain yourself:
I'm not saying it's necessarily bad, I'm just saying that you should be careful what you wish for. If you think the social and political tension in your country is bad now, you should carefully consider whether you actually want it to be more federal than it already is.
If we did switch to a EU-type federation, I'm positive it would break up between the red and blue states within 10 years. I'm not positive that would be a bad thing. At least that way both groups would get what they want (to the extent possible).
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Let me have a go
- I don't believe in the death penalty as I don't believe someone has the right to end anothers life
- I do believe in first and second Trimester Abortions
- I think everyone has the right to defend themselves, but that shouldn't mean guns for the English we are the most violent people on Earth after the Mongols.
- I believe in Equality of Opportunity,
- I oppose Equality of Outcome.
- I don't believe in any Holy books
- I can't say for certain there isn't a god.
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@lucas1 said in Explain yourself:
I don't believe in the death penalty as I don't believe someone has the right to end anothers life
I do believe in first and second Trimester AbortionsI'm going to avoid the topic here.
I don't feel that people have valid systems for determining when an abortion is allowable. From my point of view, people choose based on convenience alone, and that's not constitutional, at all.
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@xaade I know for you it is a contradiction. But I think we have explored these ideas before. I think we can politely agree on that.
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@lucas1 said in Explain yourself:
I think we can politely agree
Who are you, and what have you done with the real @lucas1?
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@HardwareGeek They weren't saying that everything I said was bullshit because I fucked up on some grammar ... in fact they were nice enough to let me correct some.
