A question for people who believe in Moral Absolutes

@Fil Albuquerque,

Quote:

It would be fun to see a world where we all were indestructible and ageless..

It may be fun for you but you do recognize that it is not reality?

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people would be jumping out of windows to kill boredom as a hobby.

Are you certain this is how everyone would see it or could this be a subjective idea of yours?

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the need for compassion and cooperation has nothing to do with being good and nice and everything to do with our frail circumstance...

Do you have any evidence of this claim?

1 Reply

@reasoning logic,

reasoning logic wrote:

Quote:
It would be fun to see a world where we all were indestructible and ageless..

It may be fun for you but you do recognize that it is not reality?

Quote:
people would be jumping out of windows to kill boredom as a hobby.

Are you certain this is how everyone would see it or could this be a subjective idea of yours?

Quote:
the need for compassion and cooperation has nothing to do with being good and nice and everything to do with our frail circumstance...

Do you have any evidence of this claim?

1 - Who said it was reality ? The scenario was what if...
2 - Spoiled brats and socialite come to mind.
3 - Yes I think I just gave you some hints on that direction, not that it was needed it is self evident !

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@Fil Albuquerque,

I recall a very popular sentence from Agent Smith regarding "Eden" like Universes (no entropy) you can see it in the first part of this video:

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Quote:

Quote:

the need for compassion and cooperation has nothing to do with being good and nice and everything to do with our frail circumstance...

Do you have any evidence of this claim?

Quote:

Yes I think I just gave you some hints on that direction, not that it was needed it is self evident !

OK so you find compassion and cooperation to be the most logical or most advanced choice? Wink

1 Reply

@reasoning logic,

Not always, as I said there is an back and forth with pure straight competition, we compete when we can and when we don't need help, but nonetheless every time it is advantageous to cooperate we do it...some complex tasks which are in the common interest require social cooperation. All intelligent species know it...a more complex way of thinking it is to understand cooperating groups compete between themselves so its a matter of scale on which both things are at work at same time.

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@MattDavis,

Matt...

...if you want to talk about "knowing" things...I am willing to "assume" a naive reality...assume what we see to be other than an illusion...and say:

I know the name on my birth certificate is Frank Apisa; I know I am sitting at a desk in my den typing at a keyboard; I know I played golf this morning (rather poorly); I know I am 76 years old; I know the capital of England is London; I know the new pope of the Catholic Church is Francis...formerly Cardinal from Argentina.

If want to talk about "knowledge" of REALITY; of the possible existence or non-existence of GOD or gods; of whether the world is one of duality or non-duality; if there is "self"; if there is existence of some sort after death of that "self"...or things like that...

...I will laugh at any epistemology you present that purports to allow you to reasonably do so... and laugh at any requests made that I present mine.

Such a thing is, whether you can see it or not, an absurdity.

So...I ask again for even one example of a moral absolute.

Alternately, I ask you for something other than your word that “optimization of success” is an objective moral absolute…or inferentially leads to an objective moral absolute.

Honestly, I do not think it can be done.

1 Reply

@Frank Apisa,

There you go with that old cheap trick Frank...lack of absolute certainty is not a sufficient good argument...reasonably, having good reason, or "hints" that point to a explicative Universal Moral system are good enough to present our current understanding and make it public...I am sure you know this so I don't get that kind of nihilist approach you have to this and similar matters, it is certainly not constructive nor it leads nowhere.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Would a physics degree count?

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There is a significant difference between having information and actually understand it, some people line of reasoning can make a perfect example on why these distinctions are necessary...

By the way, the formal coinage on "waging war on entropy" has a name in physics, producing "WORK" !

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

Any claim that this claptrap has anything to do with thermodynamics is pure nonsense (at least to those of us who have actually studied thermodynamics).

Refresher on entropy:
Emergence, entities, entropy, and binding forces

maxdancona wrote:

Would a physics degree count?

If you already have a physics degree, I don't really understand why this has to be explained.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

Quote:

History is certainly a subject about which i am well informed.

Especially the stuff you make up all by your lonesome.

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@MattDavis,

Matt,

That crappy paper doesn't explain how thermodynamics has anything to do with morality or social mores.

Here we are again arguing about physics. Entropy has a specific mathematical definition.. $http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/7/0/a/70adfaa8b72ecb33eabf5a17da159d1c.png$ .

Of course, to understand this, you need to understand what integration is (that s-shaped symbol is called an integral). Clearly, from our last discussion on math, you don't.

This is a pet peeve of mine; Religious people misusing science concepts they clearly don't understand to make dubious philosophical points that have nothing to do with science.

The second law of thermodynamics is one of the most abused. When someone who can't do simple calculus starts rambling about the second law, you know they are full of crap.

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@maxdancona,

Quote:

That crappy paper doesn't explain how thermodynamics has anything to do with morality or social mores.

Odd, that's the same thing that happened to Matt in a discussion he entered on language.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

You managed to recur to authority without disclosing any hint of an insight on whatever you want to say besides others reasoning on the matter is bullshit...if you have any argument be a man and bring it up, instead of diving into obscure suggestions...the way you are going the best you've done is giving us all a great laugh time cowboy !

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@JTT,

Are you building up momentum to become the greatest clown on the thread or are you just catching up with Maxdandcona ?

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@maxdancona,

maxdoncona wrote:

Of course, to understand this, you need to understand what integration is (that s-shaped symbol is called an integral). Clearly, from our last discussion on math, you don't.

I disagree, I understand calculus quite well, thank you very much.
If we are going to discuss the whole fatuous credentials thing, I actually "tested out" of the first 2 years of calculus my junior year of high school. Don't come at me with your chump change assumptions about mathematical rigor.

Would you care to explain the treatment of the infinitesimal in calculus, that tacit assumption of continuity.
Here is a refresher on mathematics specifically the joining of the disjoint fields of geometry and number theory:
Infinitesimals: Intuition and Rigor

Oh dear... that spooky intuition thing. Didn't seem to trouble Newton or Leibniz very much.

If you would like to discuss mathematics.

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@MattDavis,

A five year old would get the argument that precisely because things decay and disorganize themselves quite easily cooperation is an instrumental tool for optimizing and distributing work, re organizing stuff...I don't know, say, Ford assembly lines come to mind for instance...it is pathetic that this guy committed an error in evaluating the connections (people are tired it can happen) and now desperately try's to recur to authority as a smoke grenade to clean his face...does he think all damn readers are stupid ? Can't he see how that makes him look ? oh boy... Laughing

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@MattDavis,

You seem to be very good at googling papers with the keywords you want even if you don't have a clue of what they are talking about. That is not a very impressive skill, but if it makes you happy.

It doesn't mean anything.

The reason I am sure you don't have a clue about calculus is because you didn't understand the definition of acceleration...

a = dv/dt

You claimed that it was impossible for v to be zero if a was not zero. Anyone with the the most basic understand of calculus would get this particularly for constant non-zero a.

Your intuition was quite wrong, and you lack of knowledge of basic calculus was quite evident.

The second law of thermodynamics is a mathematical law. The definition of entropy is the equation I posted above. There is no other definition.

If you don't understand that mathematics in a mathematical law, you don't understand the mathematical law.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

Max the error you are referring to was after being up for 24 hours... helping patients. I was attempting to assist the answering of a basic Newtonian mechanics problem, with no knowledge of the student's mathematical training (calculus/geometry/algebra). If you would care to read further in the thread that would become clear to you.

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A question for people who believe in Moral Absolutes

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