(August 13, 2015 at 4:00 pm)excitedpenguin Wrote:(August 13, 2015 at 3:52 pm)Pyrrho Wrote: Viruses are not pharmaceuticals, but we need not worry about that. Being nice is important because otherwise murderers and other bad people will just be made more effectively bad by improving their intelligence and reasonableness. Intelligence gives someone more possibilities, and in the case of a bad person, that is a bad thing. A bad person can fuck you over more effectively if he is intelligent than if he is too stupid to be able to figure out how to fuck you over so effectively.
I mistook what you initially said. I corrected myself in the meanwhile though. But I see you still didn't get the point about niceness that I'm making. Not being nice doesn't equal being a bad person and certainly not a murderer. It's this kind of simple-minded thinking that I despise, more than anything else, sorry to say. I'll try and be reasonable with you though. Please explain to me how come you thought you told me anything new here, and why are you so fast to change the subject or misunderstand what I'm actually talking about? Please address what it is that you mean by niceness.
I do not mean anything out of the ordinary for the word "nice":
Quote:nice 1
...
1.1(Of a person) good-natured; kind
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/defini...ctCode=all
If someone is nice, the person is not a murderer, because murder is not nice. Of course, someone can be not nice without being a murderer. But I want more than just that people refrain from killing each other. If that was all I wanted, I would have stated that I wanted people to not be murderers.
"Nice" entails that people not be cruel to each other. And, of course, it entails more than just that. And I want more than just that, which is why I did not say that I simply wanted people to not be cruel.
I want people to be more than just not bad. If that is all I wanted, I would have stated that I wanted people to not be bad. But I want more. I want them to be good. "Good," though, is more ambiguous than "nice," and you have had enough trouble with "nice."
"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
