Quote:Why? I mean, to paraphrase Hawking, we are : "just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet". What's wrong with getting rid of chemical scum ? 

So your response is just more of your ignorance and nonsense then...Yawn when you have a point I might bother giving a serious response....

Quote:Hitler's charisma was an important factor for the success of the Nazi party, this is a basic fact of history.

Nope if Hitler had died some other man would have risen in his place and taken over. The rise of Fascism in Germany was about social, economic, and political issues, not Adolf Hitler. To deny this shows you know nothing about history....

(August 12, 2022 at 6:10 pm)Helios Wrote:

Quote:Why? I mean, to paraphrase Hawking, we are : "just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet". What's wrong with getting rid of chemical scum ? 

So your response is just more of your ignorance and nonsense then...Yawn when you have a point I might bother giving a serious response....

That was a question.. not a response.

(August 12, 2022 at 6:10 pm)Helios Wrote: Nope if Hitler had died some other man would have risen in his place and taken over. The rise of Fascism in Germany was about social, economic, and political issues, not Adolf Hitler. To deny this shows you know nothing about history.... 

Hitler was a world-class orator, this is kind of important if you want to promote the ideas of your party. I hope it's not too difficult for you to understand this.

Quote:That was a question.. not a response.

Actually, it was both a question and a response and it was not worth my bothering with....

Quote:Hitler was a world-class orator, this is kind of important if you want to promote the ideas of your party. I hope it's not too difficult for you to understand this.

If you think pretty words are what got the Nazis to power and not all the stuff that going on in Germany at that time and that some other Right Wing lunatic couldn't capitalize on those same issues and come up with those same solutions (others already had) you are unimaginably ignorant on 20th-century German history....

(August 12, 2022 at 12:35 am)Helios Wrote:

Quote:There's a lot of talk about not wanting to live in a savage society. But savagery and downright evil are important parts of the human experience and instinct, and there's no reason they can't have their place, too.

Yes, there is they are our worst nature, and their no reason to indulge in it.

There IS a reason to indulge savage instincts.  There's great advantage in savagery if done right.  And any American who sits there comfortably reading an internet forum, while sipping a latte or a glass of gin or whatever-- is willfully ignoring the benefits of it. It's easy to be an idealist when life is this easy, hey? When others savage the world on your behalf, so you can sleep like a baby at night?

Go to Ukraine and ask them how they feel about execution of Russian war criminals. They aren't sipping Starbucks, they are picking up their children's body parts. I'm guessing their sentiments are going to be pretty different than your own.

I can give a perfectly sound evolutionary reason for savagery-- if you let fuckers get away with fuckery, then the fuckers' DNA will survive and possibly thrive-- and then we'll live in a world full of savages. . . which we do, because your grandfather and mine, going back for tens of thousands of years, didn't have the luxury of ignoring it like we do.

(August 13, 2022 at 8:50 am)bennyboy Wrote:

(August 12, 2022 at 12:35 am)Helios Wrote: Yes, there is they are our worst nature, and their no reason to indulge in it.

Go to Ukraine and ask them how they feel about execution of Russian war criminals. They aren't sipping Starbucks, they are picking up their children's body parts. I'm guessing their sentiments are going to be pretty different than your own.

Then why do they want to join the European Union which forbades its member states from executing criminals??

Lazy commitment challenge. A person might have a complicated relationship with their normative beliefs if gravely put on the spot. We're all compromised moral agents, and I think we can allow for a person to have some pretty shitty feelings that they know they shouldn't act on. The mere existence of cultures communities, and societies would make it so even if it were not so for any other reason. We've all been there, eh?

Sometimes we do act on them, and sometimes we don't. The social contract describes what a group of people will refuse to do even if they personally want to do it, just as it describes what they must do even when they don't. To the extent that a person may want revenge in the case of a dead child (ukranian soldier or anyone else, really) they're in a challenging situation. It's considered by many societies character or reputation building to overcome these sorts of challenges; an acknowledgment of difficulty of the content. Also, an acknowledgement of the problem itself insomuch as a state might pursue the death penalty. The emotional incentivization of injustice facilitated by some of our legal systems is what puts these people in these challenging situations. Not the specific offender. That asshole put them in the unenviable position of grief, processing a deep loss. But the state that processes the execution has put them in the position of being accessory to murder, as well, and at a time when we understand ourselves to be severely compromised by nature and circumstance.

Let's just agree that we're not making the best decisions in that state, and so, that we might do something terrible in that state is not indicative of it being good decision making. It doesn't certify those courses of action as the ones we ought to take. It does not make them the just courses of action.

(August 13, 2022 at 9:35 am)Jehanne Wrote:

(August 13, 2022 at 8:50 am)bennyboy Wrote: Go to Ukraine and ask them how they feel about execution of Russian war criminals.  They aren't sipping Starbucks, they are picking up their children's body parts.  I'm guessing their sentiments are going to be pretty different than your own.

Then why do they want to join the European Union which forbades its member states from executing criminals??

Because the threat of savagery posed by that larger group might dissuade Russia.

(August 13, 2022 at 12:23 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Lazy commitment challenge.  A person might have a complicated relationship with their normative beliefs if gravely put on the spot.  We're all compromised moral agents, and I think we can allow for a person to have some pretty shitty feelings that they know they shouldn't act on.  The mere existence of cultures communities, and societies would make it so even if it were not so for any other reason.  We've all been there, eh?  

Sometimes we do act on them, and sometimes we don't.  The social contract describes what a group of people will refuse to do even if they personally want to do it, just as it describes what they must do even when they don't.  To the extent that a person may want revenge in the case of a dead child (ukranian soldier or anyone else, really) they're in a challenging situation.  It's considered by many societies character or reputation building to overcome these sorts of challenges; an acknowledgment of difficulty of the content.  Also, an acknowledgement of the problem itself insomuch as a state might pursue the death penalty.  The emotional incentivization of injustice facilitated by some of our legal systems is what puts these people in these challenging situations.  Not the specific offender.  That asshole put them in the unenviable position of grief, processing a deep loss.  But the state that processes the execution has put them in the position of being accessory to murder, as well, and at a time when we understand ourselves to be severely compromised by nature and circumstance.  

Let's just agree that we're not making the best decisions in that state, and so, that we might do something terrible in that state is not indicative of it being good decision making.  It doesn't certify those courses of action as the ones we ought to take.  It does not make them the just courses of action.

Well, that's part of it, isn't it?  You live in a country where strange kids are bullied, and where strange kids' parents (or anyone they meet online) serve as a source of deadly firepower.  To live in a state like that, and be against execution on the basis that it is too savage-- that's a HIGHLY incoherent position.  We're talking about a country where people have a constitutional (re: God-given) right to own a tool that has the purpose of quickly punching holes through homo sapiens, organisms that usually can't survive having holes punched through them.  Most common quote after a GUN-BASED MASS KILLING: "Derrrrp.  If only we had more guns!"

And then in an explicit attempt to assassinate leaders of hostile nations / organizations, America will send drones into weddings or public spaces.  Drones designed to blow up brown people indiscriminately.  Little arms and legs, bits of dresses and sandals, blown maybe a hundred yards into the sky, because despite an actual fatality ratio of maybe 100:1, it is impoverished brown people who are the terrorists, not the ones who keep bombing them?

Is this not REALLY what the abhorrence of the death penalty is all about?  A kind of moral shell-game designed to hide from the American psychology the fact that the American state is one of the most brutal and ruthless in all of human history, and that Americans are perfectly fine with that?

And then pretend that human life is sacrosanct.

Should we say "These positions seem incompatible?" Or just-- 'Murica be trollin', bruh!

(August 13, 2022 at 3:34 pm)bennyboy Wrote:

(August 13, 2022 at 9:35 am)Jehanne Wrote: Then why do they want to join the European Union which forbades its member states from executing criminals??

Because the threat of savagery posed by that larger group might dissuade Russia.

If they want to execute criminals, their values, as a people, are not Western; they are just sapping off the West.

(August 13, 2022 at 5:34 pm)Jehanne Wrote:

(August 13, 2022 at 3:34 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Because the threat of savagery posed by that larger group might dissuade Russia.

If they want to execute criminals, their values, as a people, are not Western; they are just sapping off the West.

That's why they had not been accepted already.