GENIUS FORUMS

E,

I don't mean to be offensive, but please don't waste my time.

Scott,

I consider it irresponsible to live off of welfare. It's like saying "fuck you" to your neighbor.

Just because something is easy, that doesn't make it right.

I know it sounds trite, but it honestly depends on what you value. I live off of welfare (not by design), but most people who I talk to will, after only a short discussion, consider me to be doing a valuable service. They see philosophy as an investment. I'm doing something that many people cannot do, in the best way possible: that is, by organizing my life to have the most possible free time for thinking.

There are sacrifices that must be made to live wisely off of welfare. One cannot afford luxuries such as a car. In a country where it is winter 6 months of the year, that can be a huge problem. Luckily, my city has an excellent system of bus routes.

There are many people who waste welfare, just as there are many people who could not survive without it. But there are also people who, placed in a situation where they do not have to work, take advantage of it in positive ways and end up doing important things that people who have to work to survive are incapable of accomplishing.

Then again, there are 1000 rich fops for every Darwin.

If working folk could keep their paychecks instead of being taxed on nearly 1/3 of it, they could easily get by. I realize not all of that goes to those on welfare, but a lot of it goes out to a lot of stupid shit. People on welfare is just one more portion I'd rather not spare.

Income taxes are just short of a whopping 50% north of the border.

On the up-side, to support public health care, we also tax those most likely to clog up the facilities. Cigarettes are over $10 a pack now, and a six-pack of decent beer is in the neighbourhood of $13. Junk food and other non-essentials are taxed 6% under GST, and then another 0-9% depending on the province.

Let me give you an example of a paycheck (just off the top of my head) I got for 2 weeks once:

Earned 300.
Paid 235.

You actually gave two weeks of your life for 300 measly dollars? You have to be kidding.

And you thought I was whining about being poor!

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sschaula wrote:E,

I don't mean to be offensive, but please don't waste my time.

You need to stop accusing people of wasting your time because they don't respond in the way you'd like. Maybe your insipid questions are wasting their time? Did you ever think of that?

S: I don't think anyone believes robots have feelings or awareness. I think you're reaching too far there, Dan.

E: Perhaps not today's robots, but what about once robots and computers get advanced enogh to do anything a human brain can do - but more accuratly? What would be the essential difference between a human brain and a robot's computer brain that would make the robot lacking in conciousness?

S: I don't mean to be offensive, but please don't waste my time.

That's just Scottie's immature way of saying "Wow, that's a really good point. You're right, but there's no way I'm going to admit it."
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Trevor,

I know it sounds trite, but it honestly depends on what you value. I live off of welfare (not by design), but most people who I talk to will, after only a short discussion, consider me to be doing a valuable service. They see philosophy as an investment. I'm doing something that many people cannot do, in the best way possible: that is, by organizing my life to have the most possible free time for thinking.

I don't mean any offense, because I have found you to be a good thinker...but I think that philosophy is not a valuable service.

There are sacrifices that must be made to live wisely off of welfare. One cannot afford luxuries such as a car. In a country where it is winter 6 months of the year, that can be a huge problem. Luckily, my city has an excellent system of bus routes.

Sometimes I wish I didn't have a car. I consider you lucky on that point.

There are many people who waste welfare, just as there are many people who could not survive without it. But there are also people who, placed in a situation where they do not have to work, take advantage of it in positive ways and end up doing important things that people who have to work to survive are incapable of accomplishing.

Then again, there are 1000 rich fops for every Darwin.

I don't think that people who work are incapable of thinking. That's where I kind of laugh this argument off. I think all day, and work or school doesn't get in the way of that. In fact, those things can provide good mental breaks.

Income taxes are just short of a whopping 50% north of the border.

Ouch.

On the up-side, to support public health care, we also tax those most likely to clog up the facilities. Cigarettes are over $10 a pack now, and a six-pack of decent beer is in the neighbourhood of $13. Junk food and other non-essentials are taxed 6% under GST, and then another 0-9% depending on the province.

That's good thinking, in my view.

Shah,

You actually gave two weeks of your life for 300 measly dollars? You have to be kidding.

And you thought I was whining about being poor!

It was a slow period at a crappy job. I ended up quitting without notice, and writing the owner a nasty letter.

Dan and Elizabeth,

You need to stop accusing people of wasting your time because they don't respond in the way you'd like. Maybe your insipid questions are wasting their time? Did you ever think of that?

Then fuck off. The way I see it you guys have both been making retarded arguments. I see myself trying to make decent arguments. I spend a lot of time on each response. My insipid questions have been challenging your points, yet you just slip on by with your retarded comments. I have yet to see a serious discussion from you, since way back with the articles you guys would write. Do you think you've proven yourself enough now?

I think that I've proven myself enough...so yeah, fuck off.

That's just Scottie's immature way of saying "Wow, that's a really good point. You're right, but there's no way I'm going to admit it."

No, it's my way of saying "wow that was stupid". Here I will address your point now, so you see how stupid it was:

If we are going to worry about whether using robots as tools or slaves is cruel because we have programmed them to have consciousness, then we simply have to not program them to have consciousness. Pretty fucking simple.

Scott,

I think that I've proven myself enough...so yeah, fuck off.

Would you mind telling us where all this aggression is coming from? I agree with a lot of the philosophical points you have made, but don't understand the constant attacks. Are you going through PMS or something?

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sschaula wrote:If we are going to worry about whether using robots as tools or slaves is cruel because we have programmed them to have consciousness, then we simply have to not program them to have consciousness. Pretty fucking simple.

So when one programs drones - just don't program them to be concious, and there is no problem. PFS, huh?
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Elizabeth,

I think I know wherein lies the problem. Scott thinks that people (and drones) exist before they are born. So we aren't really creating them from scratch.

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If people and drones exist before they are born, and expecially since the concept of "drone" has now been altered to be something that is genetically drawn up from scratch rather than something that is altered after conception, there is still no substantive difference between those and advanced robots. By that thinking, both the drone and the robot would exist when they were nothing more than the twinkle in a scientist's eye, so to speak.
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I agree.
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Scott,

I don't mean any offense, because I have found you to be a good thinker...but I think that philosophy is not a valuable service.

I'm not offended. I'll just try to sway your opinion of what you do.

For starters, almost nobody but a philosopher could tell you what exactly Socrates did for a living, but nearly everyone will agree that he did something valuable, and he did it well.

I go for tea with friends and acquaintances an average of 3 times per week. Often, they only intend to have a few cups and leave, but they end up getting so involved in the conversation that 45 minutes turns into 3 hours.

Last time I went for tea, I spent five hours at the shop with someone who only actually had two to spend. At the end, he said he felt like he had just read several books, and asked me why I don't write a book because it would "spread my message to a greater audience".

I told him that the world doesn't work like that. The people who write the books are not the people who come up with the ideas. By imparting wisdom to him, he will behave more wisely in the future, and people he talk to will in turn behave more wisely. Down the line, eventually, someone will add snippets of that wisdom to his own book.

Philosophers benefit non-philosophers with their wisdom, but usually only indirectly -- and always far in the future.

I readily admit that other than chatting on message boards, that's all I really do for other people, and without exception they agree that I'm doing a good job, and earn my welfare checks (last time, the acquaintance remarked, in a quip, that he's paying for me to do this; he didn't seem to mind). Some even go so far as to envy me -- while admitting that they would not be able to actually live the life I live without being paralyzed by their own thoughts.

As an inside joke, I often say I will be published post-humously.

Scott's social conditioning has taught him that the only things worth doing are things society will pay money for. He's been brainwashed to the point that he's now just a slave to the ignorant masses. At this point Scott is wasting everyone's time here, and like David said there's no point in taking anything he says seriously.

If everything I've said shouldn't be taken seriously then don't take anything I've said seriously and stop replying to my posts.

I was replying to Trevor's post.

Here's a solution: to genetically create (not alter) a living thing that has no awareness, to be the drone. Although that's very weird, I have no problem with it ethically.

EDIT:

Nick, you can fuck off too.

Trevor,

I see what you mean. That does take a lot of time that working people may not have. I still can't support someone getting money they don't earn, though.

Okay Scott,

So you don't believe that people should get money they don't earn, and we should create unconcious drones from scrach to do all the labor that does not require thinking. Now what do you propose we do with the humans who are not bright enough to to work that requires thinking? And the surplus of humans you mentioned? Abort or let them starve to death?
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BTW Scott, when you first got back after your extended break, you seemed pretty calm and serene. You're starting to get almost as irritable as you used to be. Does thinking get on your nerves?

With that in mind, if we have drones doing all the labor and the only thing humans are needed for is thinking, how is it more ethical to make all humans into thinkers than to reprogram those not designed for thinking to be happy with their work? You don't sound too thrilled with your work or you would be happy to work all day long and not care if 50% of the income from it went to taxes.
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sschaula wrote:Here's a solution: to genetically create (not alter) a living thing that has no awareness, to be the drone. Although that's very weird, I have no problem with it ethically.

What the fuck do you mean create? Everything you do comes down to alteration of some kind. Things aren't just magically "created". Why would any reasonable scientist want to "create" from scratch an entirely new genetic blue print when he can alter a perfectly good existing blue print. You must have some type of christian mentality that thinks this microscopic molecular structure has some inherent right to develop into a normal human being. If this is the case then maybe scientists should go around deconstructing every atomic structure in the universe and reconstruct it so it develops into a human being. Oh wait you can't compare those two scenarios because the former was "naturally in the state of a genetic blue print for a human being", whatever the fuck that means. Well guess what, that scientist can also "naturally" alter atomic structures to create almost anything his imagination desires. It's the same concept as "creating" anything else, you just have an irrational bias towards things being altered consciously. The only reason you think this is weird or unethical is because you have an attachment to an inherent self that is frighteningly simliar to that of christians. Like there's some magical power creating these other "natural" states of matter, with some built in right to remain unaltered by man.

sschaula wrote:Nick, you can fuck off too.

Thanks for your fucking permission Scott. I've been waiting for it to "fuck off" my whole life!

sschaula wrote:Trevor,

I see what you mean. That does take a lot of time that working people may not have. I still can't support someone getting money they don't earn, though.

Trevor don't let him trick with his use of the word "earn" here. By "earn" he means that you need to put your time and effort into something that allows Paris Hilton to get her next prescription of valtrex filled, or so Lindsay Lohan can get the latest technology to text message all her friends to get wasted this weekend. Right Scott?

Nick, thanks for the heads up.

I don't think, however, that Scott is trying to trick me. This has become an ethical debate, and I believe both of us are canny enough to realize the difficulty in changing someone's norms.

Money can, in some senses, be used as a good indicator of how immediately valuable a person's work is, and in the average case Scott has a very good point. Only on the two extremes (the idle rich, and the philosophers) does this situation become more complex.

On one hand, we have people whose apparently only value, in an economic sense, is that they provide employment for others -- and on the other hand, we have people whose value is based on something that may not manifest itself in any observable sense for decades, if not centuries (if at all), and who would not be able to do this job adequately without being almost completely idle.

There is, of course, always the possibility that the latter group -- the philosophers -- do not actually produce anything at all... ever... and without them, societies would advance perfectly fine.

The bottom line is that if the only jobs avaliable were jobs that didn't go to serving socieities irrational desires and fetishes, I'm willing to say that 80-90% of people who currently hold a job would be immediately unemployed. There would simply be no demand for their services, throwing them in the same bin as philosophers. So you see, if one is to live by Scott's philosophy they automatically become a puppet to societies ignorant and irrational nature, something no true philosopher is going to want to do.

The only jobs I could see surviving in the scenario I described above would be in the medical, food, and building fields. Although even these would end up dying too beacuse nobody would be able to afford them.

Nick, do you support the medical, food, and building fields? Because if, as you said, nobody could afford them without all the rest of the garbage, I think you are forced to support the rest of the garbage.

And, unless you actively believe in a class system, there would then be no way to remove yourself from the rest of the garbage without hypocracy.

How do you figure that no one could afford medical, food, or building without the rest of the garbage? Transportation would also be needed for these fields, so I'll add that one in...

Economics is basically trading one good or service for another. People wouldn't need much of any of these, so in exchange they would have to produce less of these things to get their needs met, but since not much would be needed anyway, the lower production would not be a problem. People would just have more time.
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