So I’m getting banned...

[Psyche]

it's not just a religious disagreement it's a moral disagreement
we disagree about right and wrong

[Psyche]

for what it's worth
i agree!

[Psyche]

lol

[Psyche]

there are lots of people i hang out with whose worldviews i don't respect at all
probably many more with ones i don't than with ones i do now that i think about it
the average person is kind of shit if you just evaluate them in terms of their belief systems tbh

[Psyche]

having the right beliefs takes work that most people just don't have the time or ability to do right
i'm still a humanist

[Psyche]

and we're lucky they do

[Psyche]

the forum has got to get more ok w letting bad people be here or in the end it will either be empty or full of hypocrites

[Psyche]

the forum has got to get more ok w letting bad people be here or in the end it will either be empty or full of hypocrites

We could start by not calling them "bad".

well i was hoping we could compromise by calling them bad and stopping there

[Psyche]

the forum has got to get more ok w letting bad people be here or in the end it will either be empty or full of hypocrites

People should just admit they're bad people in the end instead of acting like they're pinnacle of morality

at the same time people should just admit that thinking gay sex is immoral is rlly dumb

[Psyche]

how am i supposed to stop being so insufferably patronizing when there are people on this forum who will die on the hill of "two people of the same sex falling in love and committing to live their lives together is a bad thing"

do you guys know what it does to my ego when people say that stuff unironically?? nothing good

[Psyche]

but the bible itself seems to preach sexual abstinence unless for procreation and marriage between one man and woman

ok let's admit that the bible is dumb

[Psyche]

i'll rephrase
let's admit "the bible says dumb things"

[Psyche]

people get so sensitive when people shit on christianity but when the same religion calls the bedrock of a lot of people's lives an abomination it's time to grow a thick skin

[Psyche]

please excuse my indulgence i came up with that line and i just had to post it even though it didn't really fit with the thread's moment

[Psyche]

first of all, it's not my job to deprogram cult members. i'm not participating in this thread or a member of this forum to deprogram cult members. for whatever reason i just like exploring and evaluating arguments about what is the case.

imo having the wrong beliefs can make you a bad person! thinking you're doing god's will or even genuinely trying your best just doesn't absolve you of moral responsibility for the bad you do. it sure helps your odds of not being trash when you try your best not to be, but sometimes you're trash all the same.

[Psyche]

but still
while i'm happy to condemn most people as morally mediocre, as failing to achieve even low level decency given their opportunities otherwise,
and i'm happy to call them out (at least as an anon on the internet!) for it,
at the same time,
i don't really attach the same consequences to being a bad person as someone like panth does
i'm willing and even eager to call other bad people some of my dearest friends and loved ones
for a lot of reasons i'm too lazy to detail here
because of my humanism, because of my christianity, because it'd be really hard to lead a good and happy life otherwise
also because i'm pretty deliberately a bad person too
i mean im not even vegan and i don't think someone can be a good person and not vegan

[Psyche]

i want to underline that
ur not a good person if you can be vegan but won't
there's just too much evidence out there that the stuff we eat have rich mental lives the same way we do

also i like tso! we'd be friends if he weren't a stranger on the internet. maybe. he could be more picky about his friends.

[Psyche]

So if I take those two posts together, you're okay with calling other people out as bad people and you're also unwilling to help them be less bad, but you also acknowledge that you're a bad person as well and you're mostly in it for the moral fulfillment and occasional intellectual exercise? Is that about right? Because if so, that is a very Psyche take on the world. ...and honestly I kind of respect it, except for the part where you're unwilling to make things better. That's the part where our moral values diverge. I can respect that in itself.

cut:

also i like tso!

I needed a moment to realize you weren't talking about a general or his chicken

it's just that i'm done trying to be an exceptionally good person
i'm ok being as bad/good as everyone else
i just won't pat myself on the back for it like others might
i'll keep eating beef knowing that it's wrong and sometimes feel guilty about it but never change
because i've decided after a lot of deliberation that i value the taste and convenience over being that much better of a person
i've made a lot of those calls

[Psyche]

No, it's not your job to deprogram the gay-hate. But it kinda is your responsibility to not make it worse by launching hostility at it.

I disagree

[Psyche]

i disagree with the theory of political change
this idea that angry people just make things worse and it's conciliatory people behind all positive political change
it doesn't match my personal experience at all nor does it match my understanding of political history
this stray analogy about deprogramming cultists just doesn't move me at all

[Psyche]

ur absolutely not

[Psyche]

just to close — i dont wanna ban them i just wanna be allowed to call their views trash and get mad at them about it
it's the marketplace of ugh mcmenno's right i am a liberal

[Psyche]

it's hard for me to distinguish what we do to animals for food from murder
imo it's among the worst things the average person does
it's probably worse than stealing, assault, all of that
but the average person does it
i do it

[Psyche]

Like if psyche unironically believes that 90+% of the world are bad people, under his own criteria. Like, the most good, kind, and charitable person in the world, has the potential to be labelled a bad person because of their diet. Do you have to be perfect to not be bad? It's just so absurd I can't even comprehend it

i don't think you have to be perfect not to be bad
but you do have to be more good than bad
and i just don't see tons of people pulling it off

[Psyche]

nah I'm not even going to go into the fact that veganism has no appreciable effect on the environment since the vast, VAST majority of environmental damage comes from corporations and not individuals. I'm talking about the threshold, yes. Where is the line? is it veganism? but then are you a bad person if you don't protest environmental change? are you a bad person if you don't personally go and clean up waste from the ocean? are you a bad person if you don't personally assassinate the heads of the corporations that cause the most pollution? are you a bad person if you don't advocate human extinction? obviously many of these things would seem 'bad' to most people.

what does 'bad' even mean? the heat-death of the universe will occur whether or not you are vegan. None of your choices or actions matter in the grandest scheme of things. So what does it matter? is it bad relative to certain things, like a car travelling with the earth 10s of thousands of km per hour hurtling through space can still be said to be going only 50 km per hour? like, relative to the earth? so goodness and badness are releative to other things. but why is the earth the reference point? why isn't the reference point for goodness the sun? or society? or the meat industry? if you have an infection and you take antibiotics, you are a bad person relative to your gut bacteria. but if you don't you're a bad person relative to your immune system. if you take one person's side in an argument that seems balanced 50/50, are you a good or a bad person relative to each of them? relative to the earth? relative to yourself?

there are too many questions here to answer but none of them strike me as particularly challenging for my worldview or for moral philosophy in general

[Psyche]

it's probably worse than stealing, assault, all of that

no way

give me one good reason why not
sure would be a lot of weight off my shoulders if you could change my mind

[Psyche]

the only good argument i can think of against veganism is that it's necessary to keep people alive
but i only think non-veganism is immoral for those who

can

be vegans
so what else is there?

[Psyche]

i don't think cultural heritage has moral value over and above the countless animals with rich mental lives that suffer and then die to sustain it
in my mind it's like arguing for maintaining slavery in the us south because otherwise things won't be like gone with the wind anymore

[Psyche]

it's probably worse than stealing, assault, all of that

no way

give me one good reason why not
sure would be a lot of weight off my shoulders if you could change my mind

personally i am fine with being eaten after i die. So i think it works out fine. Also think if i could help someone by providing them with sustenance instead of just having my body rot is better than not.

take that to animals and we just have better treatment of the animals before we eat them. We can have ethical farming. Its the poor treatment of them that's the problem, not the killing/eating portion.

they are killed though
it's not like people just wait for the animals to live out the natural course of their lives

[Psyche]

I mean, that's not a contradiction, if that's what you are asking. I'm saying that it isn't worth keeping human society alive if they aren't allowed to participate in food traditions which have been passed down for millennia.

well that seems insane to me.

I just think we have a different view on the relative moral worth of animals. I don't buy that slavery is an analogous case. Human slavery =/= collecting eggs from domesticated chickens. I think there is a greater benefit in enjoying such cultural traditions... It is one of the few things that makes human life worth living imho.

while i totally agree that animals products help make life worth living, i don't think the added value to us outweighs the moral harm dealt to animals from how we make food from them
i cannot observe anything about the mental lives of animals that makes their pain and suffering any less morally significant than the typical person's. and even if i did, even if their pain were worth a tenth of the average person's pain, it'd still be immoral to not be vegan when you have the option not to be.

But, I will also agree that factory farming is immoral and efforts should be made to reform the current animal products industry. I favor small, localized farming systems.

we don't live in that world now though
if we lived in a totally different world where animals didn't suffer and weren't killed to become our food, i wouldn't have any qualms about consuming animal products either
we don't live in that world now though

[Psyche]

a real issue defending veganism over the more moderate vegetarianism.

think you're obsessing over the details too much
exclude eggs and milk if you want. exclude fish, too, sure. the moral hazard is still there for the average person.

[Psyche]

Third-degree murder is still murder

[Psyche]

And sure, call it silly. But I'm just not going to be convinced unless you can give me a clear

reason

why killing something like a cow for food is morally different from killing a person for food beyond that it's something everyone's okay with.

[Psyche]

its a justifiable killing.

if i'm only opposed to not being a vegan when one is free to make that choice, what makes it a justifiable killing when it comes to one species but not another

[Psyche]

Animals like cows and pigs are just so much like humans in all the ways that I understand to morally matter. They have personalities. They care for and build bonds with one another and grieve when these bonds are broken. They play and do things for pleasure. They select and strive toward goals. I can't think of any way to morally distinguish them from humans unless I just decide outright that humans are all that matter.

[Psyche]

supposing i were the god of a world like ours, if i had to choose between killing a human stranger and killing a billion german shephard dogs that would each have lives just as long and full and enjoyable as that stranger, i'd kill the dogs and it'd be an easy choice
but i can't think of a good moral justification for that choice
imo my humanism conflicts w/ morality

[Psyche]

also i totally disagree that cows don't have second-order desires

[Psyche]

don't really see how desire complexity figures into the evaluation of a life's moral worth at all

[Psyche]

humans are really smart and have richly intricate minds
why does that matter when it comes to deciding who lives and dies, who suffers and who lives happily?
it's a weird gap i've never seen answered that didn't just identify morality with humanism
but then the people behind these answers wouldn't sanction dogfighting tournaments

[Psyche]

also i've got to say, "humans are all trash" is like core christian theology so if my religious readers have beef with that they might want to reflect

the only fundamental difference between my and the christian reading of humanity is that i don't think there's any god around redeeming people

[Psyche]

imo moral truths aren't just a matter of personal opinion - they depend on objective features of the world, stuff like the positive and negative valence of pain and pleasure
but at the same time, on an existential level, people are only really accountable to their own values
if i have to call anything free will, it's that
this leaves moral truths causally inert on their own
they're only relevant to humanity because we generally include morality in our values
but morality is hardly ever chief among what we care about
so it shapes and constrains our actions but isn't at all our north star
this along with ignorance (accidental or willful) about what's good and bad are the fundamental reason is most people are bad people
all the good people get there either through a piety to morality i could never stomach or moral luck or both
do they even exist? would they be fun to hang around? does being a good person actually

matter

?
i wanna say something provocative but idk

[Psyche]

people get so sensitive when people shit on christianity but when the same religion calls

the bedrock of a lot of people's lives

an abomination it's time to grow a thick skin

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Believe it or not, there are LGBT people who don't consider their sexuality to be the bedrock of their lives.

it's literally the person you commit to devoting your life to. don't you have a wife? what is she to you?

[Psyche]

just to close — i dont wanna ban them i just wanna be allowed to call their views trash and get mad at them about it

You're already allowed to do that.

for now!

[Psyche]

That isn't directed at you specifically psyche I just find it HILARIOUS how wide the baseline is for 'bad person' in this thread, not to mention the world.

It's so SUBJECTIVE and that's what makes this debate hilarious

If someone is calling you a good person over your world views, they mean to say "good dog".

The concept of good person is just used to make people adjust to one's group's views.

What an extremely warped view.

But the question is, is it any less valid than anyone else's.

Everyone's view (yes, even yours, dear reader) is warped through their own personal lens.

I vehemently disagree with psyche saying there are objective components to morality based on pleasure/pain, because that sort of thing is, despite many attempts, immesurable and subjective at its core.

(pleasure/pain is just part of it!)
also really not surprised to find that you're a moral nihilist
but based on the tenor of your other posts i think you're too quick to call moral truth bunk just because it's ambiguous or difficult

[Psyche]

maybe persival is some aromantic sociopath and just can't relate to the possibility of falling in love with someone and centering his life around them
or maybe he thinks all that happens in some sort of vaccuum absent of sexuality or passion
or maybe he just denies the possibility of anything wholesome like that happening between two people of the same sex

[Psyche]

i think the vast majority of people treat their capacity for romantic love and then their romantic partners as part of the bedrock of their lives. it's just that for straight people the contribution of their sexual orientation to it all is in the background and unconsidered. gay people are uniquely confronted with conflict from society, their friends, their own families when they try to achieve happiness through the avenue that comes naturally to straight people. and then when they speak up about that conflict, they've "made being gay their personality". it's bullshit.

[Psyche]

maybe persival is some aromantic sociopath and just can't relate to the possibility of falling in love with someone and centering his life around them
or maybe he thinks all that happens in some sort of vaccuum absent of sexuality or passion
or maybe he just denies the possibility of anything wholesome like that happening between two people of the same sex

Or maybe I'm capable of considering that a person has a complex set of traits, has intrinsic value and is worthy of respect, despite disagreeing morally on some of those traits. My friend can do that too.

i think u have intrinsic value and are worthy of respect too
i also think you're a trash human being

[Psyche]

it's literally the person you commit to devoting your life to. don't you have a wife? what is she to you?

My friend is single and not really looking to commit to anyone for life. You're dodging the point.

jesus dude can you stop with the tokenism? i'm sure your friend wouldn't appreciate it

[Psyche]

i grew up in the american south
i'm friends with loads of bigoted people
that doesn't suddenly mean they aren't bigoted people

[Psyche]

you are still obstinately/intolerantly devoted to your own opinions and prejudices even though you have a gay friend

[Psyche]

jesus dude can you stop with the tokenism? i'm sure your friend wouldn't appreciate it

LOL - you think you know my friend better than I do, because all gays are the same or something.

gosh what a mediocre human being you are

[Psyche]

have so many anecdotes it's insane.

i'm half black, half white. in college i regularly hung with a guy who was pretty openly a white nationalist. he believed in concepts like white genocide/great replacement and that western governments should strive to keep their countries racially homogenous. he was an entertaining conversationalist with a good sense of humor. he was still a white nationalist.

no one over 30 in my family thinks it's the least bit moral to be gay. they made my life hell in concrete ways from 13 on after i decided to come out to them. in the end, they've decided they want a relationship with me even though i now live with another guy and i've decided them same despite our history and their ongoing rejection of my life choices. this doesn't suddenly mean they aren't homophobes. it means that they make compromises in the absence of complete control over the world and other people in their lives, just like every other person does.

the guy who drove the bus that took my and my siblings to church every sunday for 13 years, someone who treated us super kindly and who i admired and looked up to for years, believes it's immoral for people of different races to have sex or get married. when he and my dad had a job together, he even took my dad aside to tell him that. dude's still a racist.

back in high school i was in jrotc and worked with and befriended dozens of other kids in our fake little chain of command. one day it came up while a group of us were chatting that one of them believed that if a white woman dates a black guy then she's a slut. i said that was crazy and racist while everyone else in that group insisted that it wasn't and that i shouldn't be offended because it's my dad who's white and not my mom. we kept working together and being friends. that doesn't suddenly make their opinions okay or preserve their respect for other people. it just makes all of us complicated people.

[Psyche]

do you consider me obstinate about my opinions? i think i plainly am and yet all these anecdotes are true

[Psyche]

so you think someone can be a white nationalist - essentially a nazi - but not a bigot if they're ok socializing with people of color

[Psyche]

someone could prefer a world where i don't exist, but if they're willing to socialize with me while i do exist, bigot's just not the right word for them

[Psyche]

i think that maybe you have a comparatively exclusive a definition of "intolerance"
you seem really committed to the idea that the only way to express intolerance is through non-socialization
but i think believing mixed race people shouldn't be brought into existence is intolerance all on its own

[Psyche]

do you type all this with a straight face persival

[Psyche]

ah yes the inevitable result of every conversation with persival on mafiascum.net
the somehow always surprising revelation that he's just an idiot

[Psyche]

lol i take it all back just put the cows in the matrix

[Psyche]

imagine we could also just breed cows that are cold and unfeeling

[Psyche]

not without second-order desires they won't

[Psyche]

it was totally a moral problem

[Psyche]

Third, decide what your overall goal is. Persivul isn't violently assaulting gays, he's not trying to deny them rights, he's apparently friends with one... It seems like he's pretty tolerant of gay people despite the fact that he doesn't particularly care for it himself. So, what is your end goal in engaging with Persivul? To get him to love the very concept of gay love?

obviously im trying to hook up with him

[Psyche]

i think who you love is more core to a person than smoking

[Psyche]

man i wish homosexuals were never persecuted though.

because tbh. fmpov sexuality is just not that interesting about a person that we should tie it to someones identity.

hey neither is skin color but here we are

[Psyche]

i'd say sexual orientation is way more interesting a personal trait than skin color though
race/ethnicity contains a lot beyond skin color of course - there's a whole cultural background that's been built around it all
but if you take out all the culture, sexual orientation stands alone as a meaningful psychological characteristic
and even more than that, it relates to one of the core pursuits the typical person ever commits themselves to - falling in love with and committing to be with someone for the rest of your life
let's not ignore that it's not just homosexuality that persival's type are opposed to; it's that entire range of human experience that is same-sex romance, from attraction to dating to marriage to raising a family together, all of that
and sexual orientation colors and drives all that as fundamentally as any of our basic drives

[Psyche]

like, if you eliminate sexuality from the typical person or from society in general, so much is gone
there's a gaping void i don't think would be so obvious if, say, we all stopped thinking about race

[Psyche]

like, if you eliminate sexuality from the typical person or from society in general, so much is gone

Paging Anix

but we all agree that anix is wrong

[Psyche]

r u sure i changed ur mind i sure was awfully angry and passive aggressive

[Psyche]

I mean I am sure Persivul tolerates gay people as long as they don't talk about it, don't kiss in public, don't hold hands, don't have children, don't go to parent teacher conferences, don't make a big deal out of it when he says something homophobic, don't try to put their relationship on par with a straight marriage, and don't make it a part of media.

I have a gay couple as clients. In meetings with them they wore what appeared to be wedding rings. Didn't bother me.

When the IRS made married filing joint available to gay couples married under state laws, I called them to ask if they were legally married (they weren't). Didn't bother me.

Oh thank god Persivul was willing to comply with the law whew. He didn't even ask them to remove their wedding rings. I think by his definition, this proves he's not homophobic.

poor guy missed his chance at a political career

[Psyche]

guys guys this thread can't be active anymore i have work to do
im gonna leave everything to chamber
chamber if someone says something homophobic and you don't have it in you to act mad for me just say tsk tsk tsk
people will love it

[Psyche]

For straight people homossexuality is weird and naturally repulsive

it's ok i'm not offended i feel the same way about joking about hating your partner

[Psyche]

and the chainsmokers

[Psyche]

For straight people homossexuality is weird and naturally repulsive

it's ok i'm not offended i feel the same way about joking about hating your partner

and being "just not that into politics"

[Psyche]

this is ur chance creature seize the day

[Psyche]

what ban

[Psyche]

leftist bogeyman is just biding his time