rohern
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rohern has not written any posts yet.
I do not mean this to be flippant, but Richard Feynman's -- who quit drinking when he thought he might be showing early signs of alcoholism and did not want to risk damaging his brain -- wife would ask you this:
What do you care what other people think?
If you are at a bar or a party and you determine that other people are looking down on you for not drinking, why should you care about such silliness? It's your body and your health and damn people who cannot respect that.
Good on you for not drinking.
Should we not have at least some good evidence that the world has been measurably changed by charitable actions before positing this? Can we also establish that the making of as much money as possible does not itself have costs and do damage?
It can be easily, even sleepily argued that many of the popular vehicles for becoming wealthy are quite destructive. We can happily found charities to ameliorate this damage, but what of it?
You may have excellent arguments to support this charity statement, but these are not at all apparent to me. Please do enumerate them if you have a moment.
To give my own answer, I think the single best contribution that a person can make to society is to raise a child (genetically related or adopted) educated in the sciences and in reason, and with mind strong and nimble and ready to apply this knowledge in any field she finds to be interesting.
If you think that people working in synthetic biology and bioengineering are doing worthwhile work (and I entirely agree that they are), then go help them. Why the ennui? Set yourself to spend a month investigating these fields and find if you are able to suss out interesting ideas that might (how can you know?) be of use. If your imagination is sparked, then you should find a job in a lab on a trial basis and take your investigations further. I would encourage anyone with a good mind to go into this area of research, as it will doubtless benefit me (I cannot speak to society).
I think... (read 357 more words →)
I think this objection, though I empathize with your bringing it up, is not really worth our time in considering.
Look, we all know, if we are honest, that there is a kind of skepticism (the result of realizing the problem of solipsism and following through on its logical consequences) that cannot be eliminated from the system. It is universal and infects everything.
For this reason, we really need to know more about why these folks have objections to these conclusions. Why we should give particular credence to the opinions of members of the philosophical professions is not obvious, as certainly this site testifies to the fact that you need... (read more)
You might read Nicholas Taleb's book The Black Swan for more ideas on this topic, as he agrees with you on your main point. He argues, I think strongly, that the best way to go about discovering new ideas and methods is to obsessively tinker with things, and thus to expose oneself to the lucky accident, which is generally the real reason for insight or original invention.
Very well put.
I think an important part of our disagreement, at least for me, is that you are interested in people generally and morality as it is now --- at least your examples come from this set --- while I am trying to restrict my inquiry to the most rational type of person, so that I can discover a morality that all rational people can be brought to through reason alone without need for error or chance. If such a morality does not exist among people generally, then I have no interest for the morality of people generally. To bring it up is a non sequitur in such a case.
I do not... (read more)
I think we might still be talking past each other, but here goes:
The reason I posit and emphasize a distinction between subjective judgments and those that are otherwise -- I have a weak reason for not using the term "objective" here -- is to highlight a particular feature of moral claims that is lacking, and in thus being lacked, weakens them. That is, I take a claim to be subjective if to hold it myself I must come upon it by chance. I cannot be brought to it through reason alone. It is an opinion or intuition that I cannot trace logically in my own thought, so I cannot... (read 622 more words →)
Perhaps this is just silliness, but I am curious how you would feel if the question were:
"You have a choice: Either one person gets to experience pure, absolute joy for 50 years, or 3^^^3 people get to experience a moment of pleasure on the level experienced when eating a popsicle."
Do you choose popsicle?
When I lived in China, drinking as a group over dinner was a common social interaction. The one acceptable excuse, on which no one would press you, was to claim that your doctor has forbid it, which is another form of "health reasons". If people do press you on it, give them a quick cold glance that says "you are being rude" and then get back to the conversation.