Treat others as you would have them treat you only makes sense if by treating others poorly you can incur retaliation for treating them badly.
uh huh.
You clearly have no idea what the Golden Rule is. I know I have linked it for you in the past, but clearly you have not actually read about it.
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is only one way in which it manifests. It is not an ethic based on fear of your neighbor.
"Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" is another way in which it manifests. The Golden Rule is the ethic of reciprocity. That is all. Fear and love are irrelevant. Some moral philosophers have used love as a way of stating it. It does not matter.
The golden rule can be a standard for justice or morality. I don't know why you are obsessed with fear.
It is based on fear of your neighbor. If you don't fear your neighbor, there's no reason to worry about how he'll treat you in return. If you don't fear your neighbor, if you don't believe he can actually retaliate against you, you have no reason to expect that if you take his eye he'll take yours. So you could take both of his eyes, his tongue, his fingers and his ears. And then what can he do? Nothing.
The golden rule assumes that how you treat people directly influences how they can treat you. But this is only true if you are both equally capable of violence. This is probably part of the reason why the state has historically monopolized force. They can drink your milkshake and you can't do shit about it. Except revolt. And revolutions are messy.
"An eye for an eye" only makes sense if reciprocal violence is possible. "Treat others as you would have them treat you" only makes sense if they can actually reciprocate your poor treatment. It's just a conditional strategy.
So let's put this into practice. Let's say the state takes your money and gives it to someone else, they've taken your eye, how do you take their eye back? What are you going to do about it? Kill a cop? A politician? The IRS agent assigned to your case? They're just a part of Leviathan.
bloomj31: It is based on fear of your neighbor. If you don't fear your neighbor, there's no reason to worry about how he'll treat you in return. If you don't fear your neighbor, if you don't believe he can actually retaliate against you, you have no reason to expect that if you take his eye he'll take yours. So you could take both of his eyes, his tongue, his fingers and his ears. And then what can he do? Nothing.
From the wiki article I linked to:
A similar passage, a parallel to the Great Commandment, is Luke 10:25-28 25And one day an authority on the law stood up to put Jesus to the test. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to receive eternal life?” 26What is written in the Law?” Jesus replied. “How do you understand it?” 27He answered, “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Love him with all your strength and with all your mind.’(Deuteronomy 6:5) And, ‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself.’ ” 28“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do that, and you will live.”. The passage in the book of Luke then continues with Jesus answering the question, "Who is my neighbor?", by telling the parable of the Good Samaritan, indicating that "your neighbour" is anyone in need.[45] Jesus' teaching, however, goes beyond the negative formulation of not doing what one would not like done to themselves, to the positive formulation of actively doing good to another that, if the situations were reversed, one would desire that the other would do for them. This formulation, as indicated in the parable of the Good Samaritan, emphasises the needs for positive action that brings benefit to another, not simply restraining oneself from negative activities that hurt another. Taken as a rule of judgement, both formulations of the golden rule, the negative and positive, are equally applicable.[46] In one passage of the New Testament Saint Paul refers to the golden rule: Galatians 5:14 14For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this;Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
A similar passage, a parallel to the Great Commandment, is Luke 10:25-28
25And one day an authority on the law stood up to put Jesus to the test. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to receive eternal life?” 26What is written in the Law?” Jesus replied. “How do you understand it?” 27He answered, “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Love him with all your strength and with all your mind.’(Deuteronomy 6:5) And, ‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself.’ ” 28“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do that, and you will live.”.
26What is written in the Law?” Jesus replied. “How do you understand it?” 27He answered, “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Love him with all your strength and with all your mind.’(Deuteronomy 6:5) And, ‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself.’ ”
The passage in the book of Luke then continues with Jesus answering the question, "Who is my neighbor?", by telling the parable of the Good Samaritan, indicating that "your neighbour" is anyone in need.[45] Jesus' teaching, however, goes beyond the negative formulation of not doing what one would not like done to themselves, to the positive formulation of actively doing good to another that, if the situations were reversed, one would desire that the other would do for them. This formulation, as indicated in the parable of the Good Samaritan, emphasises the needs for positive action that brings benefit to another, not simply restraining oneself from negative activities that hurt another. Taken as a rule of judgement, both formulations of the golden rule, the negative and positive, are equally applicable.[46]
In one passage of the New Testament Saint Paul refers to the golden rule:
Galatians 5:14
14For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this;Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
Would you kindly point out to me where in this section there is talk of fear? All I see here is talk of loving your neighbor as you would love yourself.
You have a serious problem, bloomj31. I don't know why you live in constant fear of your neighbors, but I can assure you that I do not. I am most certain that most people do not, libertarian or otherwise. You see, there is this thing called empathy, and many of the ways the golden rule has been stated has been with this in mind. Why do you think people do charity? Why do they help other people? It is not because they fear them.
You have a serious problem, and I hope you get help.
bloomj31: The golden rule assumes that how you treat people directly influences how they can treat you. But this is only true if you are both equally capable of violence. This is probably part of the reason why the state has historically monopolized force. They can drink your milkshake and you can't do shit about it. Except revolt. And revolutions are messy. "An eye for an eye" only makes sense if reciprocal violence is possible. "Treat others as you would have them treat you" only makes sense if they can actually reciprocate your poor treatment. It's just a conditional strategy.
No, the golden rule does not assume this. You assume this. The golden rule is a statement. It is an ethic. It makes no assumptions. Perhaps there are some people that follow the golden rule out of fear, but not only is this fear irrelevant to the rule itself, most people do not live in this constant state of fear.
I do not fear the cashier at the supermarket. I do not fear the professors I had in college. I do not fear Ron Paul. I do not even fear the state of Iran. There are some conservatives who do have this fear of the other, and they do fear immigrants and Iran. But guess what? Not only are conservatives not the majority, they are not even half of the population of America.
You have a serious problem if you are living in constant fear. You may wish to see a therapist or someone else who can help you. It isn't healthy to be this afraid all the time.
bloomj31: So let's put this into practice. Let's say the state takes your money and gives it to someone else, they've taken your eye, how do you take their eye back? What are you going to do about it? Kill a cop? A politician? The IRS agent assigned to your case? They're just a part of Leviathan.
Well, the fact of the matter is that the NAP is not in practice. But, if you would like to know more about the implications of the NAP, I suggest you start reading some Rothbard and Block and Hoppe and Kinsella and whoever else talks about it. They may not all reach the same conclusions, but you'll at least get an idea of the implications of the NAP.
I'm not going to do your homework for you.
@Bloom31
Sigh. What happens if you treat your neighbor with love and he uses Leviathan to drink your milkshake and you can't do shit about it?
Gotlucky: Well, the fact of the matter is that the NAP is not in practice.
Yeah because it's a very vulnerable conditional strategy.
Then obviously you are in a society that is not enforcing the golden rule.
There are different things you could do. You could beat up your neighbor. You could sue your neighbor. You could kill your neighbor. You could do nothing. You could dance in the street naked. You could shout and scream and throw a temper tantrum. You could buy another milkshake. You could turn the other cheek. You could spank your neighbor (kinky). You could go on a hunger strike. You could lobby your government to ban all milkshakes so that no one is tempted to drink another's milkshake.
What's the point of the question?
Again, I point out that you really have no idea what the golden rule even is. I suggest you read the wiki article. It doesn't do much to explain it. But with that many great minds stating it in all sorts of different ways, there has to be a possibility, however slight, that you may actually understand what the golden rule is.
But I can't do your homework for you. You have to actually desire to learn. I can't make you. As they say, you can bring a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.
Gotlucky: What's the point of the question?
You say most people follow the golden rule out of empathy and love. I don't believe that shit for a minute but whatever it doesn't matter.
I say they follow it out of fear, because that's what I do. But who cares? Ultimately it's the same result.
But there's a loophole here. The point of the question is to find out why anyone would ever want to live by this golden rule with everyone else when clearly there's this huge loophole and a simple way to exploit it.
If you neither love your neighbor so much (at least not enough to care about taxing him) nor fear your neighbor (because what's he going to do about getting taxed a little and besides you're paying taxes too) then you can do whatever you want and nothing bad will happen to you as long as most everyone else applies a similar strategy and the people who get really mad and violent are rare and are punished swiftly when they show up. This pretty much seems to me to be the case now.
I can advocate taxing you and in my society I'm considered normal. You could advocate abolishing taxes and you're the radical. Because I'm not expected to love you so much that I wouldn't take a little drink of your milkshake nor fear you so much that I'm scared of what will happen if I do. Because in my society (the US) you owe me that milkshake one way or another legally.
Now my conditional moral strategy is to take what I can get out of taxes and then obey the law so that I don't go to jail. I fit into society and get to benefit from the state. I'm obviously not the only one who employs this moral strategy.
When it comes to the golden rule Bloom is partially right. Part of the reason a person will follow the golden rule is in the hope that others won't harm them, if you were to harm your neighbor then you would obviously expect retaliation from him or his family. The golden rule isn't all about fear, the rule isn't purely for conflict avoidance, it is also a way of achieving a better society at least in theory. A society in which every person were to treat every other person the way they wanted to be treated would result in a very nice society, again this is just in theory. Some people are psychologically damaged in such a way that they want people to treat them badly, thus if they were to apply the golden rule they would need to treat others badly.
K well I'm worn out for now I'm gonna go read.
bloomj31: You say most people follow the golden rule out of empathy and love. I don't believe that shit for a minute but whatever it doesn't matter. I say they follow it out of fear, because that's what I do. But who cares? Ultimately it's the same result.
You might want to go back and read what I wrote, because I did not say that most people follow the golden rule out of empathy and love. So, perhaps both my time and yours would be wasted less if you attempted to comprehend what I actually write instead of the straw men that you constantly contruct.
Then you say that you follow the golden rule. Really? I don't believe you. You constantly advocate for a society not based on the golden rule, but you follow it anyway out of fear? Oh please. Give me a break.
Having said all that, it may be true that most people follow the golden rule out of empathy. After all, most people don't like seeing their neighbors hurt and injured. Perhaps you don't care about other people, but that in know way means that other people don't care.
But I certainly don't think most people follow the golden rule out of love for their neighbor. Some people do that, but I doubt most do. Most probably do it because they don't like to see harm come to their fellow man. That's not the same as loving them.
bloomj31: But there's a loophole here. The point of the question is to find out why anyone would ever want to live by this golden rule with everyone else when clearly there's this huge loophole and a simple way to exploit it.
There is no loophole. It is the ethic of reciprocity. It is stated in many different ways. But the essence of the golden rule has no loophole.
bloomj31: If you neither love your neighbor so much (at least not enough to care about taxing him) nor fear your neighbor (because what's he going to do about getting taxed a little and besides you're paying taxes too) then you can do whatever you want and nothing bad will happen to you as long as most everyone else applies a similar strategy and the people who get really mad and violent are rare and are punished swiftly when they show up. This pretty much seems to me to be the case now.
You are going to have to find another way to state this, because as it is now, it is incomprehensible to me.
bloomj31: I can advocate taxing you and in my society I'm considered normal. You could advocate abolishing taxes and you're the radical. Because I'm not expected to love you so much that I wouldn't take a little drink of your milkshake nor fear you so much that I'm scared of what will happen if I do. Because in my society (the US) you owe me that milkshake one way or another legally.
I have noticed you keep talking about "your" society. It does not seem like you are talking about a hypothetical society, but perhaps you are. Oh, I see, you are talking about the US. Um, bro, I live in the US too. I have stated this before. So why do you keep talking about "your" society as if I don't live in the US too? What purpose does this serve?
Regardless, there isn't much to comment on here. Most people do support taxation. But guess what? Most people don't sit down and think about the implications of their core beliefs. Let's look at Jews, for example. Here is an excerpt from the wiki article on the golden rule in the section on Judaism:
The Sage Hillel formulated a negative form of the golden rule. When asked to sum up the entire Torah concisely, he answered:[58] That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn. —Talmud, Shabbat 31a, the "Great Principle"
The Sage Hillel formulated a negative form of the golden rule. When asked to sum up the entire Torah concisely, he answered:[58]
That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn. —Talmud, Shabbat 31a, the "Great Principle"
Now, how many anarchist Jews do you know? EDIT: I suppose the case could be made that I am an anarchist Jew, as I did have a Bar Mitzvah, but I am an atheist now, and I was talking about religious Jews as opposed to ethnic Jews. The only one I am aware of is FlyingAxe, and I don't know him in real life. But guess what? This is one of the negative forms of the golden rule. And guess what again? The NAP is a negative form of the golden rule (and it is meant expressly for law). But how many Jews really sit down and think about the implications of this core belief? I doubt very many do. First off, most Jews aren't even orthodox. You have a bunch of reform Jews who don't really give a damn about the Torah or the Talmud, and they go to synagogue twice a year. They are too busy working about social justice to actually sit down and think about the implications of the golden rule.
This does not mean that they don't value the golden rule. All we can logically derive from this is that they haven't sat down and thought through the implications of a core belief. There are some things that we can possibly say about it, though. I already stated that it could be they just haven't thought through the implications of the golden rule. Another could be that the golden rule is not the only value that they have. They might value it alongside other values, and the golden rule might come second to these other values. Another possibility is that they don't value the golden rule at all. But most people don't fall into that third category.
So you can keep bringing up the fact that most people support taxation, but it really says nothing about what most of us libertarians are saying. That most people don't take the time to reason through the implications of the golden rule does not mean that most people don't value the golden rule. Logic 101.
bloomj31: Now my conditional moral strategy is to take what I can get out of taxes and then obey the law so that I don't go to jail. I fit into society and get to benefit from the state. I'm obviously not the only one who employs this moral strategy.
Yes, we already established several posts back that you intend to mooch off of society.
gotlucky: Then you say that you follow the golden rule. Really? I don't believe you. You constantly advocate for a society not based on the golden rule, but you follow it anyway out of fear? Oh please. Give me a break.
It would probably be more accurate to say that I try to follow the laws of the state of GA and the federal government.
But yes, I do think I follow the golden rule a lot of the time. But not when I don't think I need to.
I have various ways of dealing with people and thinking about my relationships with people, I don't just utilize one basic strategy.
Gotlucky: Having said all that, it may be true that most people follow the golden rule out of empathy. After all, most people don't like seeing their neighbors hurt and injured. Perhaps you don't care about other people, but that in know way means that other people don't care.
Empathy is an interesting human trait. I'm reading a book right now called "The Science of Evil" that explores what neuroscientists call the "empathy circuit" in the brain. I would personally recommend the book though I think it has its problems. One of the highlights of the book is that the author states that empathy in humans exists on a spectrum. Some people are extremely empathetic and some people have no empathy whatsoever and most people, he says, are somewhere in between.
That being said I don't know exactly what "most people" feel towards their neighbors though I think there's evidence that humans tend to show more empathy for those they're actually familiar with or those who they live in close proximity to. This might have evolutionary roots as in the ancestral environment the people living near you or who you knew personally were probably related to some degree.
I'm not quite sure how the human brain contemplates the costs and benefits of reciprocity or if that sort of empathic sentiment could change depending on circumstance. The author of Science of Evil says that it definitely can.
It's not that I don't care about people at all, it's that I care about me first and then my family and then my friends and so on in smaller and smaller amounts. I'm probably towards the middle of the empathic spectrum. I have no trouble recognizing other people's emotions or understanding why they feel them I just don't care a lot of the time, particularly when I don't feel like there's much in it for me or if I don't think they'd actually reciprocate.
Gotlucky: There is no loophole. It is the ethic of reciprocity. It is stated in many different ways. But the essence of the golden rule has no loophole.
Well what I'm trying to say is that there are ways around having to worry about reciprocal violence. I'm not personally inclined to rely purely on empathy to motivate people to follow the ethic of reciprocity.
Maybe I should just point you to chapter 5: Aggression: Stability and the Selfish Gene of the Selfish Gene. He talks about different conditional strategies which is what I'm trying to relate to the concept of the golden rule which I see as a sort of conditional moral strategem.
Let me know what you think.
Gotlucky:I live in the US too. I have stated this before. So why do you keep talking about "your" society as if I don't live in the US too? What purpose does this serve?
I was just trying to point out that in the society we live in my moral framework is absolutely acceptable. That's all.
Gotlucky: Most people don't sit down and think about the implications of their core beliefs.
How do you know that?
Gotlucky: All we can logically derive from this is that they haven't sat down and thought through the implications of a core belief.
I don't know I can't speak for them but I think there might be something else at work here. I've got a book coming called "Why Everyone Else is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind" and I think it might have some good clues about what's going on.
Here's an interesting chapter from Innateness and the Structure of Mind called "Cognitive Neuroscience and the Moral Mind."
I can't really find just one thing I want to quote so I would recommend reading the whole chapter I think a lot of it is relevant to what we're talking about, particularly section 3: Neuroimaging studies of moral judgment and decision making which includes the trolley car problem (Link 2)
Perhaps the human brain categorizes taxation differently from other types of harm to others precisely because it's so impersonal.
Gotlucky: Another could be that the golden rule is not the only value that they have. They might value it alongside other values, and the golden rule might come second to these other values.
I'm really interested in finding out how this sort of process actually works in the brain. I think the aforementioned books may be useful.
Gotlucky: Yes, we already established several posts back that you intend to mooch off of society.
Sure I see no reason not to take advantage of the opportunity.
bloomj31: Empathy is an interesting human trait. I'm reading a book right now called "The Science of Evil" that explores what neuroscientists call the "empathy circuit" in the brain. I would personally recommend the book though I think it has its problems. One of the highlights of the book is that the author states that empathy in humans exists on a spectrum. Some people are extremely empathetic and some people have no empathy whatsoever and most people, he says, are somewhere in between. That being said I don't know exactly what "most people" feel towards their neighbors though I think there's evidence that humans tend to show more empathy for those they're actually familiar with or those who they live in close proximity to. This might have evolutionary roots as in the ancestral environment the people living near you or who you knew personally were probably related to some degree. I'm not quite sure how the human brain contemplates the costs and benefits of reciprocity or if that sort of empathic sentiment could change depending on circumstance. The author of Science of Evil says that it definitely can. It's not that I don't care about people at all, it's that I care about me first and then my family and then my friends and so on in smaller and smaller amounts. I'm probably towards the middle of the empathic spectrum. I have no trouble recognizing other people's emotions or understanding why they feel them I just don't care a lot of the time, particularly when I don't feel like there's much in it for me or if I don't think they'd actually reciprocate.
I understand that not everything you write has to contradict whatever I write, but none of this contradicts the point that "it may be true that most people follow the golden rule out of empathy. After all, most people don't like seeing their neighbors hurt and injured." Just saying.
Anyway, I do strongly suspect that most people do follow the golden rule out of empathy for their fellow man. Most people don't like seeing harm come to others. Hell, for that matter, most people don't actually insult other people. Usually when they do, there is something that provoked them, right or wrong.
bloomj31: Well what I'm trying to say is that there are ways around having to worry about reciprocal violence. I'm not personally inclined to rely purely on empathy to motivate people to follow the ethic of reciprocity. Maybe I should just point you to chapter 5: Aggression: Stability and the Selfish Gene of the Selfish Gene. He talks about different conditional strategies which is what I'm trying to relate to the concept of the golden rule which I see as a sort of conditional moral strategem. Let me know what you think.
Well I have never advocated that we rely on pure empathy to enforce the golden rule. Actually, I think I've been quite vocal about the fact that I support the NAP. I've even said that the NAP is just a legal realization of the golden rule, and it specifically has to do with aggression. So I'm not really sure where you got this idea that the golden rule would be enforced by "purely on empathy".
And the only way to get around worrying about reciprocation is to be more powerful than everyone else. No one ever can satisfy this requirement. Remember Rome? Assassinations left and right. Sure, we don't have a lot of assassinations going on in America today, but the more America moves towards tyranny, the more the state will create a climate where assassinations will become more common.
So I'm not really sure what you are trying to get at here.
bloomj31: How do you know that?
I don't want to sound insulting, but do you socialize much? Most people don't like to talk about religion and politics. Those are the 2 subjects to avoid in conversation. That said, there are plenty of people who do talk about religion and politics, but most people who do are just talking with like minded people and reassuring themselves about their viewpoints.
Most people don't change their beliefs much by the time they get to college. And look at college students. They rarely talk about religion or politics in depth. Most of the discussions regarding politics are just reassuring themselves of their viewpoints, something I just stated above. "Oh how evil Bush is!" "Oh how evil Obama is!" That's about it. And guess what? The rest of the adults are no different.
Talk show host: "Obama is evil!"
Talk show caller: "Yeah! Obama is evil!"
Now, I'm not gonna contest those particular claims, but these people rarely go into depth as to the foundations of their beliefs.
bloomj31: Perhaps the human brain categorizes taxation differently from other types of harm to others precisely because it's so impersonal.
Most people hate paying taxes. Period. Here's an excerpt from Howie Carr's Why Don't Pro-Tax Taxpayers Pay More Taxes?:
Hey moonbats of Massachusetts -- why won’t you pay more taxes? You’re always lecturing the rest of us how taxes are an investment in the future, the price we pay for civilization, etc., etc. But when given the option of personally paying your fair share, hey, come back here, you pony-tailed trust-fund recipient you. ... As the deadline for filing 2009 state income taxes nears, once again the Beautiful People of Massachusetts are proving that while they enjoy talking the talk, walking the walk is another thing altogether. We have a two-tier income tax in this state, you know. You have the option of paying either at the standard rate of 5.3 percent, or at the old, higher 5.85 percent rate. As of Wednesday, here are this years numbers, according to the state DOR: Of 1,840,000 state tax filers, exactly 931 have opted to pay taxes at the higher rate. That works out to one-twentieth of one percent. Think of it this way: In 2000, only 60 percent of the Massachusetts electorate voted to cut the income tax, but a decade later 99.95% of the population has decided to take advantage of the tax cut a lot of them claimed they didn’t want or need. The moonbat motto is: Do as I say, not as I do. Consider the charitable deductions (or lack thereof) of the most sanctimonious liberal politicians: Obama, Biden, Kerry. They throw around quarters - their own, anyway - like they were manhole covers. But they would gladly give you the shirt off somebody else’s back.
Hey moonbats of Massachusetts -- why won’t you pay more taxes? You’re always lecturing the rest of us how taxes are an investment in the future, the price we pay for civilization, etc., etc. But when given the option of personally paying your fair share, hey, come back here, you pony-tailed trust-fund recipient you. ...
As the deadline for filing 2009 state income taxes nears, once again the Beautiful People of Massachusetts are proving that while they enjoy talking the talk, walking the walk is another thing altogether.
We have a two-tier income tax in this state, you know. You have the option of paying either at the standard rate of 5.3 percent, or at the old, higher 5.85 percent rate.
As of Wednesday, here are this years numbers, according to the state DOR:
Of 1,840,000 state tax filers, exactly 931 have opted to pay taxes at the higher rate. That works out to one-twentieth of one percent. Think of it this way: In 2000, only 60 percent of the Massachusetts electorate voted to cut the income tax, but a decade later 99.95% of the population has decided to take advantage of the tax cut a lot of them claimed they didn’t want or need.
The moonbat motto is: Do as I say, not as I do. Consider the charitable deductions (or lack thereof) of the most sanctimonious liberal politicians: Obama, Biden, Kerry. They throw around quarters - their own, anyway - like they were manhole covers. But they would gladly give you the shirt off somebody else’s back.
And consider, most of the Republicans/conservatives in MA vote for lowering taxes. Those are just the people who are honest about not wanting to pay much in the way of taxes. The rest of the liberals who vote for it are just lying out of their asses.
Also, most people have been brought up in a society where there are taxes. Most people don't consider the possibilities of an ancap society. So what does it matter if they believe that taxes and government are a necessary evil? They haven't even given the possibility of ancap serious thought. And for most of them, by the time they are 30 or 40 years old, it's just too late for them to consider.
they would gladly give you the shirt off somebody else’s back.
Classic!
Gotlucky: but none of this contradicts the point that "it may be true that most people follow the golden rule out of empathy. After all, most people don't like seeing their neighbors hurt and injured." Just saying.
I'm not really trying to contradict the point you're making. I'm trying to explore where why and how empathy works in the brain and where why and how it can break down.
I know from looking at studies that people do often respond viscerally to the pain and discomfort of others, particularly when it's in person. But they don't always seem to respond the same way when the pain is being done at a great distance from them or when the person in pain isn't someone they care about very much. Empathy seems to have its limits.
I think you might really like The Science of Evil. I found it to be quite interesting even though I think some parts of it definitely require more work. Here's a lecture I found on youtube. He goes through some of the main points. I really think you will enjoy the book.
Gotlucky: Anyway, I do strongly suspect that most people do follow the golden rule out of empathy for their fellow man. Most people don't like seeing harm come to others.
It seems highly plausible that empathy is one of the cognitive functions that allows people to comprehend and follow the golden rule but I think the scientific basis for the phenomenon of empathy or the lack thereof in some cases requires more in depth study to be certain.
Gotlucky: Hell, for that matter, most people don't actually insult other people. Usually when they do, there is something that provoked them, right or wrong.
Firstly, how do you know this? Personal experience?
Secondly, how do you know that they aren't insulting each other internally all the time? Which one represents the "real social feeling?"
Thirdly, if you bump into me and in my head I think "asshole" but in real life I say "excuse me." Which one was my "real" reaction? Which one displays my real feelings for you?
Gotlucky: And the only way to get around worrying about reciprocation is to be more powerful than everyone else. No one ever can satisfy this requirement.
Permanently no. Temporarily yes. And it's good to be the king while it lasts.
Gotlucky: Remember Rome? Assassinations left and right. Sure, we don't have a lot of assassinations going on in America today, but the more America moves towards tyranny, the more the state will create a climate where assassinations will become more common.
Do you think men won't want power anymore if that starts to happen?
Gotlucky: I don't want to sound insulting, but do you socialize much? Most people don't like to talk about religion and politics.
First of all, how do you claim to know this? Personal experience?
Secondly, assuming accuracy for argument's sake, do you think this social phenomenon happens because people don't want to investigate the consistency of their own beliefs or because they don't want others to investigate the consistency of their beliefs?
Isn't hypocrisy and philosophical inconsistency perfectly socially sustainable as long as it's not talked about openly? Or, as you pointed out, talked about in agreeable company?
Gotlucky: That said, there are plenty of people who do talk about religion and politics, but most people who do are just talking with like minded people and reassuring themselves about their viewpoints.
Well I don't really know who "most people are talking to" but it seems natural that "most" people would try to find like-minded people to talk to as it helps to avoid negative social feedback. Still...I'm really not convinced that the problem is just "that they haven't sat down and thought through the implications of a core belief.." That doesn't really even make sense from a neurological point of view. What the hell does a "core belief" look like in the brain? Is it...further down in the brain than other beliefs? How does it take primacy?
I also don't think it makes sense to talk about "core beliefs" because I don't think people really understand why the hell they hold the values that they do in the first place. I'm starting to think that the part of the brain that does the social rationalizing has no direct access to the "source of the beliefs" at all.
There are some interesting books on this. Pinker talks about it in The Blank Slate and How the Mind Works. Kurzban really fleshes out the modular mind concept in Why Everyone is a Hyprocrite: Evolution and the Modern Mind. There are many more books on this subject but those are the ones that I think really present the ideas well. Here's Kurzban giving a short presentation on the concept of the modular mind. I really think you are going to like this stuff.
Gotlucky: Most people don't change their beliefs much by the time they get to college. And look at college students. They rarely talk about religion or politics in depth. Most of the discussions regarding politics are just reassuring themselves of their viewpoints, something I just stated above.
What are you basing these statements on? Personal experience?
Gotlucky: Now, I'm not gonna contest those particular claims, but these people rarely go into depth as to the foundations of their beliefs.
What if they don't rationally understand or have access to them? What does the "foundation of a belief" look like in the brain?
Gotlucky: Most people hate paying taxes. Period.
Maybe they do, but that's not what I was talking about. I should've been more clear.
I said that "perhaps the human brain categorizes taxation as different from other types of harm because it's so impersonal." I should've said "harm to others because it's so impersonal."
I think we can observe this sort of effect on "moral reasoning" in studies related to the trolley car problem. When people are asked if they'd push a lever or something that would cause one person to die instead of five an overwhelming majority of people answer yes.
But when the question is posed the same way but with the footbridge stipulation, more people answer that they wouldn't kill one person to save five if to do so they actually had to physically push someone in front of the trolley car.
"What is going on in the brain when people mull over these different scenarios? Thinking through cases like the Trolley Problem—what Greene calls an impersonal moral dilemma as it involves no direct violence against another person—increases activity in brain regions located in the prefrontal cortex that are associated with deliberative reasoning and cognitive control (so-called executive functions). This pattern of activity suggests that impersonal moral dilemmas such as the Trolley Problem are treated as straightforward rational problems: how to maximise the number of lives saved. By contrast, brain imaging of the Footbridge Problem—a personal dilemma that invokes up-close and personal violence—tells a rather different story. Along with the brain regions activated in the Trolley Problem, areas known to process negative emotional responses also crank up their activity. In these more difficult dilemmas, people take much longer to make a decision and their brains show patterns of activity indicating increased emotional and cognitive conflict within the brain as the two appalling options are weighed up.
Greene interprets these different activation patterns, and the relative difficulty of making a choice in the Footbridge Problem, as the sign of conflict within the brain. On the one hand is a negative emotional response elicited by the prospect of pushing a man to his death saying “Don’t do it!”; on the other, cognitive elements saying “Save as many people as possible and push the man!” For most people thinking about the Footbridge Problem, emotion wins out; in a minority of others, the utilitarian conclusion of maximising the number of lives saved."
fMRI scans show that the human brain considers these moral questions quite differently. Perhaps this is part of what's going on with taxation because it's interpersonal harm done from a great, impersonal, anonymous distance for intentions that are at least plausible and quite often socially acceptable and all it takes to maintain it is complacency.
"Data from 5,000 MST participants showed that people appear to follow a moral code prescribed by three principles:
• The action principle: harm caused by action is morally worse than equivalent harm caused by omission.
• The intention principle: harm intended as the means to a goal is morally worse than equivalent harm foreseen as the side-effect of a goal.
• The contact principle: using physical contact to cause harm to a victim is morally worse than causing equivalent harm to a victim without using physical contact.
Crucially, the researchers also asked participants to justify their decisions. Most people appealed to the action and contact principles; only a small minority explicitly referred to the intention principle. Hauser and colleagues interpret this as evidence that some principles that guide our moral judgments are simply not available to, and certainly not the product of, conscious reasoning. These principles, it is proposed, are an innate and universal part of the human moral faculty, guiding us in ways we are unaware of. In a (less elegant) reformulation of Pascal’s famous claim that “The heart has reasons that reason does not know,” we might say “The moral faculty has principles that reason does not know.”
The notion that our judgements of moral situations are driven by principles of which we are not cognisant will no doubt strike many as implausible. Proponents of the “innate principles” perspective, however, can draw succour from the influential Chomskyan idea that humans are equipped with an innate and universal grammar for language as part of their basic design spec. In everyday conversation, we effortlessly decode a stream of noise into meaningful sentences according to rules that most of us are unaware of, and use these same rules to produce meaningful phrases of our own. Any adult with normal linguistic competence can rapidly decide whether an utterance or sentence is grammatically valid or not without conscious recourse to the specific rules that determine grammaticality. Just as we intuitively know what we can and cannot say, so too might we have an intuitive appreciation of what is morally permissible and what is forbidden."
These moral intuitions would've developed over a very very long time a very long time ago in a very different social environment where there were no governments per se, at least not in the modern sense of the word. So it seems reasonable to assume that the human brain might have no natural way of contemplating the harmful effects of taxation on others, not to mention things like inflation.
I really highly recommend Why Everyone is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind. I just read finished it yesterday I think it gives tremendous insight into this issue.
Gotlucky: And consider, most of the Republicans/conservatives in MA vote for lowering taxes. Those are just the people who are honest about not wanting to pay much in the way of taxes. The rest of the liberals who vote for it are just lying out of their asses.
I'm not claiming that I think everyone wants to pay taxes. I'm claiming that everyone is perfectly capable of not wanting to pay taxes themselves but absolutely wanting others to pay them (regardless of what they might say publicly) and that they're capable of this for a number of psychological reasons. One is that hypocrisy is a consequence of the modular structure of the brain, people can simultaneously criticize a behavior in others and then do it themselves with very little personal discomfort particularly when it's socially accepted and even more so when it's easy rationalized to make sense. Another is that hypocrisy isn't necessarily a bad social strategy if many people are persuaded by it and willing to go along with it.
These conservative people may vote to lower taxes, but are they really interested in eliminating taxes altogether? I don't know for sure but I doubt it. I mean...what are they using to pay for the military? And don't a lot of older conservatives still want to collect their social security checks and their medicare? How are they going to ban abortion if there's no state to do so? Well luckily there's a solution. Conservatives can just as easily vote to pay less taxes but still keep taxes around to pay for the things they like and still get to call themselves conservatives. Many conservatives use rhetoric (talk of freedom and liberty) that sounds vaguely libertarian but the policy often ends up being pretty statist and authoritarian. I'm sure you've noticed this as well. For them the hypocrisy may even be more pronounced than with liberals since at least liberals admit they have no ideological problem with taxes. But it's ok because the hypocrisy is so widespread within conservative ranks that being a conservative hypocrite is no big deal socially. Why? Because hypocrisy and inconsistency bears little social cost as long as it's widespread.
By the way, what makes you think liberals are always lying? Isn't it possible that a part of them absolutely "believes" what they say? I tend to think that they absolutely believe what they're saying it's just that the module of the brain that informs their moral reasoning isn't the same module that ultimately influences their behavior. They can also get away with calling tax and spend policies "charity" because it's a socially accepted form of hypocrisy. Like conservatives, their hypocrisy and inconsistencies bear them little social cost because it's so widespread.
Gotlucky: Most people don't consider the possibilities of an ancap society. So what does it matter if they believe that taxes and government are a necessary evil? They haven't even given the possibility of ancap serious thought.
How do you know this?
Do you think the arguments are really that compelling?
Are you absolutely sure that the modules/parts of the brain responsible for articulating "beliefs" are even all linked to and/or consciously aware of the multitude of modules/parts of the brain that are actually responsible for causing human behavior?
You've just got to check out this book. I think it will, at the very least, give you something to think about.
Gotlucky: And for most of them, by the time they are 30 or 40 years old, it's just too late for them to consider.
Why's that?
P.S. I think what we could do here is take a break from this conversation, do some reading and then come back to it. Recommend to me two or three books on logic that you think would be good for a layman to learn formal logic and I'll read them and get back to you on them. At the same time, you could take some time to check out some of my suggestions on evo psych and neuroscience and then we can come back and discuss them later when both of us are caught up. I actually have a lot of books on evo psych and neuroscience to get through as well so I may have more information to present even within the next couple of weeks.
I promise I'll take the time to read your recommendations. What do you think?
bloomj31: It seems highly plausible that empathy is one of the cognitive functions that allows people to comprehend and follow the golden rule but I think the scientific basis for the phenomenon of empathy or the lack thereof in some cases requires more in depth study to be certain.
Empathy is probably the main contributing factor. Fear may sometimes be a factor too. Most people don't live their lives in fear of aggression from others, so that is probably not the main factor. How do I know? Well, paranoia is considered abnormal so, by definition, it means that most people do not live in fear of aggression from others.
bloomj31: Firstly, how do you know this? Personal experience?
I am going to assume that you meant this in good faith and that you are not trolling. This is one of the reasons I keep bringing up social norms. It is not normal for people to insult others, provoked or not. I am not saying that people don't do it, I am just saying that it is not normal. It is most likely the case that everyone has at some point insulted another person. But this is what etiquette and social norms are for. These are rules that help people regulate their behavior when in a social environment. The reason these rules are called norms is because it is normal for people to follow them. Something cannot be said to be a norm if most people do not follow it, and typically, it is not just most people but the vast majority of people required for it to be a norm. Not always, but it is typically the case.
So how do I know that most people don't insult each other? Because there are rules and norms regarding etiquette, and insulting others is typically considered to be breaking these rules, or more specifically, the norms. In other words, it is not normal.
bloomj31: Secondly, how do you know that they aren't insulting each other internally all the time? Which one represents the "real social feeling?"
It doesn't matter what people's attitudes are, it matters what people's actions are. Even if everybody hated everybody else, they still benefit from social norms and voluntary exchange. But we know that it is false to say that everybody hates everybody else, so it's not really a premise that needs to be explored.
bloomj31: Thirdly, if you bump into me and in my head I think "asshole" but in real life I say "excuse me." Which one was my "real" reaction? Which one displays my real feelings for you?
As I said above, it doesn't matter what you are thinking internally, it matters what you do externally. Your personal attitudes and thoughts are irrelevant to social norms. They are rules. You can either follow them or break them. But what you think or feel does not follow or break rules, only your actual actions can be said to do this.
So, maybe your "real" feelings are that everybody is an asshole, but no one else will care so long as you abide by the social norms.
bloomj31: Do you think men won't want power anymore if that starts to happen?
There will always be men who want power.
bloomj31: First of all, how do you claim to know this? Personal experience?
Again, I was referring to social norms. Apparently you have never heard the saying "Don't talk about religion or politics". So no, I am not relying on personal experience, I am citing a norm. Obviously, there are times when people can get away with it, but it is a norm for a reason. Most people don't talk about religion and politics with strangers, and friendships can get strained when people start talking about them too. People tend to find others who agree with them, and they just talk about it among themselves, never really studying anything in depth.
bloomj31: Secondly, assuming accuracy for argument's sake, do you think this social phenomenon happens because people don't want to investigate the consistency of their own beliefs or because they don't want others to investigate the consistency of their beliefs?
This is a false dilemma. It probably doesn't even occur to most people that they have inconsistencies in their beliefs. The reason this "social phenomenon" happens is because it is a norm...which means that it is there to help resolve or prevent conflicts. Whether or not it has the by-product of reducing the investigations into the matter of consistency is irrelevant to its purpose as a norm.
bloomj31: Isn't hypocrisy and philosophical inconsistency perfectly socially sustainable as long as it's not talked about openly? Or, as you pointed out, talked about in agreeable company?
Sure it is. It could probably be socially sustainable even if talked about openly. I don't necessarily see this as a desireable situation. I'd prefer people shedding most of their double standards, at least regarding the NAP and especially the state.
bloomj31: Well I don't really know who "most people are talking to" but it seems natural that "most" people would try to find like-minded people to talk to as it helps to avoid negative social feedback. Still...I'm really not convinced that the problem is just "that they haven't sat down and thought through the implications of a core belief.." That doesn't really even make sense from a neurological point of view. What the hell does a "core belief" look like in the brain? Is it...further down in the brain than other beliefs? How does it take primacy?
What does "2+2" look like in the brain? What does the image of a keyboard look like in the brain? What does a song look like in the brain? It's irrelevant what a "core belief" looks like in the brain to the purposes of talking about it. Something either is or is not a core belief. There can be more than one core belief for different people. What does the golden rule look like in my brain? What does the NAP look like in my brain? What does the NAP look like in your brain?
What does logic look like in the brain? What do the laws of thought look like in the brain? Look, it does not matter what a person's core beliefs are or what they look like. For any given set of premises, there are certain conclusions that can be logically derived from them. If someone has the golden rule as their core belief, then the logical conclusion is the NAP and then on to anarchy. So, if someone has the golden rule as their core belief, and their conclusion is not the NAP and anarchy, then there are certain things that we can say:
1) This person has not yet reasoned out his core belief to its logical conclusion
2) He has used fallacious logic trying to find its logical conclusion
3) He has other core beliefs that change what the conclusion will be
4) This person has other core beliefs but he still is using fallacious reasoning.
Perhaps there are others that I missed, but as you can see, there is a very high chance that if someone holds the golden rule as his core belief, he may very well not understand its implications.
bloomj31: I also don't think it makes sense to talk about "core beliefs" because I don't think people really understand why the hell they hold the values that they do in the first place. I'm starting to think that the part of the brain that does the social rationalizing has no direct access to the "source of the beliefs" at all.
Nonsense. All people have core beliefs. They don't have to be the same for everyone. They can have multiple core beliefs.
bloomj31: What are you basing these statements on? Personal experience?
Well I'm not even sure why you are questioning me on this, as just above you have stated, and this is an exact quote:
bloomj31: Well I don't really know who "most people are talking to" but it seems natural that "most" people would try to find like-minded people to talk to as it helps to avoid negative social feedback.
Well I don't really know who "most people are talking to" but it seems natural that "most" people would try to find like-minded people to talk to as it helps to avoid negative social feedback.
bloomj31: What if they don't rationally understand or have access to them? What does the "foundation of a belief" look like in the brain?
Like I said, most people don't even bother to think about it. So what's the problem here? Most people just don't do it. They have other concerns. There are forums like this on the internet, and we talk about this stuff. But just because we do doesn't mean that others do. But if you want to try an experiment, why don't you just go up to people, start with your family, then move onto your friends, and then you can go onto asking neighbors and then strangers...ask them what their core beliefs are and what they conclude from these beliefs.
You might find some people to humor you, but I have a very strong suspicion that you are going to get a lot of strange looks. And I also doubt most people will be able to answer those two questions. Maybe you'll get lucky and quite a few will be able to answer them, but then you should go ahead and examine whether those core beliefs logically lead to the conclusions these people stated. I will be very surprised if the majority of people can answer both questions and have the conclusions be logically derived from the premises.
bloomj31: "Data from 5,000 MST participants showed that people appear to follow a moral code prescribed by three principles: • The action principle: harm caused by action is morally worse than equivalent harm caused by omission. • The intention principle: harm intended as the means to a goal is morally worse than equivalent harm foreseen as the side-effect of a goal. • The contact principle: using physical contact to cause harm to a victim is morally worse than causing equivalent harm to a victim without using physical contact. Crucially, the researchers also asked participants to justify their decisions. Most people appealed to the action and contact principles; only a small minority explicitly referred to the intention principle. Hauser and colleagues interpret this as evidence that some principles that guide our moral judgments are simply not available to, and certainly not the product of, conscious reasoning. These principles, it is proposed, are an innate and universal part of the human moral faculty, guiding us in ways we are unaware of. In a (less elegant) reformulation of Pascal’s famous claim that “The heart has reasons that reason does not know,” we might say “The moral faculty has principles that reason does not know.”
Well, if that isn't evidence supporting that most people value the golden rule, then I don't know what is. Thanks for doing the legwork for me.
bloomj31: These conservative people may vote to lower taxes, but are they really interested in eliminating taxes altogether? I don't know for sure but I doubt it. I mean...what are they using to pay for the military? And don't a lot of older conservatives still want to collect their social security checks and their medicare? How are they going to ban abortion if there's no state to do so? Well luckily there's a solution. Conservatives can just as easily vote to pay less taxes but still keep taxes around to pay for the things they like and still get to call themselves conservatives. Many conservatives use rhetoric (talk of freedom and liberty) that sounds vaguely libertarian but the policy often ends up being pretty statist and authoritarian. I'm sure you've noticed this as well. For them the hypocrisy may even be more pronounced than with liberals since at least liberals admit they have no ideological problem with taxes. But it's ok because the hypocrisy is so widespread within conservative ranks that being a conservative hypocrite is no big deal socially. Why? Because hypocrisy and inconsistency bears little social cost as long as it's widespread.
And this is the reason why I think most people have not taken the time to reason out the conclusions of their core beliefs. Obviously, if conservatives truly valued liberty, then there would be certain conclusions that we can derive. But guess what? They don't seem to hold these conclusions. So, as I stated before, there are certain things we can say about that. The main thing being that they have other core beliefs or they have not taken the time to understand where their beliefs lead them.
And call most conservatives authoritarian, and they will be angry and insulted and insist that it is really the liberals that authoritarian. Most conservatives don't respond well to being accused of not valuing liberty.
bloomj31: By the way, what makes you think liberals are always lying? Isn't it possible that a part of them absolutely "believes" what they say? I tend to think that they absolutely believe what they're saying it's just that the module of the brain that informs their moral reasoning isn't the same module that ultimately influences their behavior. They can also get away with calling tax and spend policies "charity" because it's a socially accepted form of hypocrisy. Like conservatives, their hypocrisy and inconsistencies bear them little social cost because it's so widespread.
By the way, what makes you use logical fallacies so much? When did I ever say that "liberals are always lying"? There were exactly 931 people in the entire state of MA that actually paid the higher rate. I am saying that any person who claimed that taxes should not be lower and then wasn't one of those 931 people is a hypocrite and a liar. They may say with their mouths that they don't want taxes to be lower, but their actions speak otherwise.
And no where in there did I say that "liberals are always lying". I have no idea where you got that from.
bloomj31: How do you know this?
Do you know why so many people on this forum are thrilled about Ron Paul? It's because he is bringing awareness to the libertarian cause. If people are not aware of libertarianism and ancap, how can they have given it thought? Furthermore, did you know that Murray Rothbard initially did not want to refer to himself as an anarchist? He wanted to use the term "anti-state". He said that this was because "anarchy" was associated with "communism". How could people have thought about ancap if their thoughts of anarchy are to go to communism? And then, of course, there is the other common definition of chaos. Even today, most people still use anarchy to mean either communism or chaos. So, how could people have put thought into ancap if they aren't even thinking about it as a possibility?
And then there is Austrian Economics. Um, it's not a mainstream school of economic thought...did you know that? Did you know that most people don't know what AE is? Did you know that Ron Paul is bringing awareness to it? Did you know that even Paul Krugman hasn't read any AE books? Bob Murphy is constantly writing articles to debunk Krugman, and it's painfully clear that he isn't even aware of the actual AE arguments.
Let's play another experiment. You can go up to all your family, friends, neighbors and then strangers, and you can ask them what they think about Anarcho-Capitalism and AE, and you can go ahead and create a thread here and post what their responses are. Let us know what their thoughts and objections are (if they have any, which I consider likely). You can take notes so that you can get word for word objections.
bloomj31: Do you think the arguments are really that compelling?
Obviously I do, or I wouldn't be an ancap. I recognize that if someone comes to a different conclusion, that either they hold different core beliefs than me, or if they don't, then they are mistaken in their logic.
bloomj31: Why's that?
I'll tell you what, you can go ahead and ask the people you meet who are over 40 years old, and you can ask them when they realized that they were not going to change their opinions regarding politics and religion.
bloomj31: P.S. I think what we could do here is take a break from this conversation, do some reading and then come back to it. Recommend to me two or three books on logic that you think would be good for a layman to learn formal logic and I'll read them and get back to you on them. At the same time, you could take some time to check out some of my suggestions on evo psych and neuroscience and then we can come back and discuss them later when both of us are caught up. I actually have a lot of books on evo psych and neuroscience to get through as well so I may have more information to present even within the next couple of weeks. I promise I'll take the time to read your recommendations. What do you think?
Well, as I said before, I don't really have an interest in studying neuropsychology or evolutionary psychology now. I wasn't particularly fond of the textbook I used in college for logic 101. It was okay I guess. Just go to amazon.com and search books for "introduction to logic". Most will probably be fine. The most important things for a beginner, imo, is to understand truth tables and categorical statements and syllogisms. There is a hell of a lot more the logic than that, but if you get those down pretty well, that's probably more than enough logic to get you through what you encounter in life.
Gotlucky: Obviously I do, or I wouldn't be an ancap. I recognize that if someone comes to a different conclusion, that either they hold different core beliefs than me, or if they don't, then they are mistaken in their logic.
I think this is what this whole thread really boils down to.
I get this sense that many libertarians think that people basically value liberty but that they just don't understand what it means so they support something else out of ignorance. They also tend to think it has a lot to do with government propaganda.
Is that what you think?
Gotlucky: Well, paranoia is considered abnormal so, by definition, it means that most people do not live in fear of aggression from others.
I'm not talking about paranoia. I'm talking about the fear of retaliatory aggression. Paranoia isn't just living in fear of aggression from others, retaliatory or not. Paranoia is constantly harboring persecutory beliefs which often manifest themselves in conspiracy theories. Paranoia is literally thinking everyone is out to get you all the time no matter what.
Fear of retaliatory aggression is perfectly normal though. It's just an acknowledgement that everyone is capable of violence and that violence against another person can lead to violence against oneself. The golden rule. Do not do unto others as you wouldn't have them do unto you. It would be abnormal to not have some fear of retaliatory aggression. That sort of lack of fear is usually seen in psychopaths, they don't care about punishment.
Gotlucky: Well, if that isn't evidence supporting that most people value the golden rule, then I don't know what is. Thanks for doing the legwork for me.
Not just value. It's not really a choice. Everyone is pre-programmed to understand it. The problem is that our innate moral sense developed in a totally different time and place so it may not be activated under supernormal conditions in the modern world. I think this is part of the reason why people don't feel bad when advocating taxation. Our innate moral sense didn't evolve when there was any equivalent to modern taxation. Taxation is a supernormal stimuli.
Gotlucky: And this is the reason why I think most people have not taken the time to reason out the conclusions of their core beliefs. Obviously, if conservatives truly valued liberty, then there would be certain conclusions that we can derive. But guess what? They don't seem to hold these conclusions. So, as I stated before, there are certain things we can say about that. The main thing being that they have other core beliefs or they have not taken the time to understand where their beliefs lead them.
Or maybe they think they hold liberty as a high value but really don't and have no idea that different modules of their brain are in conflict. Perhaps the part that talks isn't aware of the parts that actually make the decisions. The tail wags the dog and the dog is none the wiser.
Gotlucky: And call most conservatives authoritarian, and they will be angry and insulted and insist that it is really the liberals that authoritarian. Most conservatives don't respond well to being accused of not valuing liberty.
Yeah most of them seem very conflicted. Presumably because they don't know what the hell they really value they just know what they're supposed to say.
Gotlucky: Sure it is. It could probably be socially sustainable even if talked about openly. I don't necessarily see this as a desireable situation. I'd prefer people shedding most of their double standards, at least regarding the NAP and especially the state.
I think you're rather rare if you actually practice what you preach. I think most people want to have their cake and eat it too and then eat everyone else's cake on top of it if they can. It's only natural.
Gotlucky: Like I said, most people don't even bother to think about it.
What makes you think people will change even if they're bothered to think about it? Are you sure the parts of the brain we use to talk to one another are ultimately responsible for the parts of the brain making all the decisions?
Gotlucky: Maybe you'll get lucky and quite a few will be able to answer them, but then you should go ahead and examine whether those core beliefs logically lead to the conclusions these people stated. I will be very surprised if the majority of people can answer both questions and have the conclusions be logically derived from the premises.
I wouldn't be surprised if the conclusions weren't derived from the premises because I don't think people really know why the hell they do the things they do to begin with. I think the part that does the talking evolved mainly to serve the function of a public relations agent, not for the purpose of understanding the rest of the machine. I don't think people have any idea what their "core beliefs" are because I don't think people actually have "core beliefs."
Gotlucky:What does "2+2" look like in the brain? What does the image of a keyboard look like in the brain? What does a song look like in the brain?What does the golden rule look like in my brain? What does the NAP look like in my brain? What does the NAP look like in your brain? What does logic look like in the brain? What do the laws of thought look like in the brain?
Btw I think these are all really interesting questions but unlike you I think they're incredibly relevant to understanding human behavior and the human condition.
I think that to truly understand human action, one has to truly understand the piece of organic machinery responsible for it: the human brain. Until we truly understand the human brain we can't really understand all the things that it generates, whether that be a sense of numbers, music, storing an image, understanding and generating language, formulating an interpersonal ethical system, a "core belief" or anything else really.
We can talk about "core beliefs" and their logical implications all day long but until we understand how they're generated in the brain, until we understand how these things function within the brain, how they even inform action and to what extent, whether or not there are other things informing action and whether or not we are aware of them etc etc etc, I don't think we can make meaningful conclusions about human behavior as it relates to "core beliefs."
Perhaps the brain doesn't separate values into categories the way we might consciously think it does. Perhaps our values are far more contextually, state and historically based (to borrow from Kurzban.) Perhaps what "we" value is heavily dependent on a number of different genetic and environmental factors and perhaps this process isn't accessible to the conscious mind. I can't be sure but I really do think a lot of the evidence from the cognitive sciences suggests this view may be accurate. I think it's absolutely worth investigating.
I think we really need to go back to the basics to understand how and why humans organize themselves they way they do, until then I think we're just swinging around in the dark.
bloomj31: I think this is what this whole thread really boils down to. I get this sense that many libertarians think that people basically value liberty but that they just don't understand what it means so they support something else out of ignorance. They also tend to think it has a lot to do with government propaganda. Is that what you think?
Yes and no. Liberty is "the condition of being free from control or restrictions". Considering the definition, most people (if not all) value liberty at least for themselves. However, a lot of people do not value liberty for others. In that case, a lot of people desire power over others. Power is "control". So while most (if not all) people desire liberty for themselves, there are many people who desire power over others.
However, most people do not crave power over others the way they want liberty for themselves. Consider the ratio of criminals (forget the state for now) to the rest of society. Even better, consider the ratio of actual criminals to the rest of society. Forget prostitutes and drug users. Look at the criminals who actually exercise power over involuntary victims. This is a very small percentage of people in society who actually do this.
Now, consider the amount of people who desire liberty for themselves. If it isn't everyone, it's damn close. And the thing is, most people don't just desire liberty for themselves, they do desire it for others too. Consider homosexuals and marriage. Do you think each homosexual is only desiring marriage for himself and his partner, let the rest of the homosexuals be damned? Of course not. They band together and try to pass laws legalizing state recognition of gay marriage.
Consider the Tea Party. Do you think each Tea Partier is demanding that taxes be lower for just himself? Of course not.
Do you see a pattern? People don't just value liberty for themselves, they value it for others too. And libertarians tend to think that most people really do desire liberty (because they do...), and libertarians think that if most people understood economics better, most people would at least be minarchists, if not outright anarchists.
But the problem is that most people don't understand economics, and most people are obsessed with the idea of "government certainty". All of the statist arguments have been debunked by libertarian anarchists. The only arguments left are really just claims of feelings, such as what you typically end up offering. You say things like, "Well, I think that 2 hours of people's time is worth the trade off of potentially catching a bank robber". There is no argument here. It is a statement of feeling. The only kind of response to this is that I feel the opposite. But there is no argument to debunk.
Part of the problem of debunking statist arguments is that most people aren't learned enough in economics to understand the arguments and the counterarguments. But just because they can't understand the libertarian anarchist counterarguments doesn't mean that they are not logically sound.
So yes, most people do value liberty, but most people also do not understand that the state is anti-liberty, by definition. And then there is the problem of people who realize it but then call the state a necessary evil. But at least they are aware of the hypocrisy.
bloomj31: I'm not talking about paranoia. I'm talking about the fear of retaliatory aggression. Paranoia isn't just living in fear of aggression from others, retaliatory or not. Paranoia is constantly harboring persecutory beliefs which often manifest themselves in conspiracy theories. Paranoia is literally thinking everyone is out to get you all the time no matter what. Fear of retaliatory aggression is perfectly normal though. It's just an acknowledgement that everyone is capable of violence and that violence against another person can lead to violence against oneself. The golden rule. Do not do unto others as you wouldn't have them do unto you. It would be abnormal to not have some fear of retaliatory aggression. That sort of lack of fear is usually seen in psychopaths, they don't care about punishment.
According to the DSM-IV-TR:
The essential feature of Paranoid Personality Disorder is a pattern of pervasive distrust and suspiciousness of others such that their motives are interpreted as malevolent. This pattern begins by early adulthood and is present in a variety of other contexts. Individuals with this disorder assume that other people will exploit, harm, or deceive them, even if no evidence exists to support this expectation (Criterion A1). They suspect on the basis of little or no evidence that others are plotting against them and may attack them suddenly, at any time and without reason. They often feel that they have been deeply and irreversibly injured by another person or persons even when there is no objective evidence for this. They are preoccupied with unjustified doubts about the loyalty or trustworthiness of their friends and associates, whose actions are minutely scrutinized for evidence of hostile intentions (Criterion A2). Any perceived deviation from trustworthiness or loyalty serves to support their underlying assumptions. They are so amazed when a friend or associate shows loyalty that they cannot trust or believe it. It [sic] they get into trouble, they expect that friends and associates will either attack or ignore them.
The essential feature of Paranoid Personality Disorder is a pattern of pervasive distrust and suspiciousness of others such that their motives are interpreted as malevolent. This pattern begins by early adulthood and is present in a variety of other contexts.
Individuals with this disorder assume that other people will exploit, harm, or deceive them, even if no evidence exists to support this expectation (Criterion A1). They suspect on the basis of little or no evidence that others are plotting against them and may attack them suddenly, at any time and without reason. They often feel that they have been deeply and irreversibly injured by another person or persons even when there is no objective evidence for this. They are preoccupied with unjustified doubts about the loyalty or trustworthiness of their friends and associates, whose actions are minutely scrutinized for evidence of hostile intentions (Criterion A2). Any perceived deviation from trustworthiness or loyalty serves to support their underlying assumptions. They are so amazed when a friend or associate shows loyalty that they cannot trust or believe it. It [sic] they get into trouble, they expect that friends and associates will either attack or ignore them.
There is a lot more, but you can read it if you want. Now, I do not believe that most people are paranoid, as paranoia is abnormal. What I said before, and I'll say it again, fear is not the main factor that causes people to value the golden rule. It may be a factor sometimes for some people, but ultimately, fear is not the main factor. If people really lived in fear of retaliation from others, they would be paranoid. People just do not go about their lives in fear of what other people might be doing to them. The people who live their lives in fear are paranoid (unless, of course, someone is actually out to get them).
Just to reiterate for emphasis, people do not live their lives in fear of retaliation. Fear may be a factor sometimes for some people, but it is not a main factor.
bloomj31: Not just value. It's not really a choice. Everyone is pre-programmed to understand it. The problem is that our innate moral sense developed in a totally different time and place so it may not be activated under supernormal conditions in the modern world. I think this is part of the reason why people don't feel bad when advocating taxation. Our innate moral sense didn't evolve when there was any equivalent to modern taxation. Taxation is a supernormal stimuli.
You seem confused about what value is. Wiktionary has a good defintion of value: "the degree of importance you give to something". People value the golden rule. They ascribe a degree of importance to the golden rule. Now, when we use "value" in this manner, we are saying that people ascribe a high degree of importance to the golden rule.
It does not matter if they contemplated for 30 years under a tree or if they just feel that way because of evolution. They point is that they value it. The choice is irrelevant.
bloomj31: Or maybe they think they hold liberty as a high value but really don't and have no idea that different modules of their brain are in conflict. Perhaps the part that talks isn't aware of the parts that actually make the decisions. The tail wags the dog and the dog is none the wiser.
Or maybe this is what I've been saying all along, and this is a direct quote:
gotlucky: Most people do support taxation. But guess what? Most people don't sit down and think about the implications of their core beliefs.
Most people do support taxation. But guess what? Most people don't sit down and think about the implications of their core beliefs.
bloomj31: Yeah most of them seem very conflicted. Presumably because they don't know what the hell they really value they just know what they're supposed to say.
See above.
bloomj31: I think you're rather rare if you actually practice what you preach. I think most people want to have their cake and eat it too and then eat everyone else's cake on top of it if they can. It's only natural.
Maybe, maybe not. I certainly don't aggress against other people, so in that regard I follow the golden rule quite well. Morally speaking, I've certainly insulted my fair share of people, and most of the time it was not unprovoked, but there is a fair amount that I have done unprovoked. Though most of that is online, and most people insult back. In real life, I don't usually initiate insults.
Anyway, regardless of what most people say they believe or don't believe, the vast majority of people engage in voluntary exchange, and most people don't initiate insults at other people. Whether or not people acknowledge this is immaterial. Most people do actually follow the golden rule. If I'm rare, the only reason would be that I acknowledge the golden rule in politics, whereas most people do not. But then this would make me just like every other libertarian anarchist.
bloomj31: What makes you think people will change even if they're bothered to think about it? Are you sure the parts of the brain we use to talk to one another are ultimately responsible for the parts of the brain making all the decisions?
Most people won't think about it. Most people who have held their beliefs well into adulthood are also probably incapable of changing their beliefs. Libertarians should target young people. Ron Paul does this, and to great success. Hopefully other libertarians will follow his lead.
bloomj31: I wouldn't be surprised if the conclusions weren't derived from the premises because I don't think people really know why the hell they do the things they do to begin with. I think the part that does the talking evolved mainly to serve the function of a public relations agent, not for the purpose of understanding the rest of the machine. I don't think people have any idea what their "core beliefs" are because I don't think people actually have "core beliefs."
All people have core beliefs. Some people have more than one core belief. I wouldn't be surprised if all people have more than one core belief. After all, I place a high value on the golden rule, but I also value other things too.
I'll be very clear what I am talking about when I say "core beliefs". Everyone has beliefs. Period. Wiktionary has a good definition of "core" as it relates to this:
The most important part of a thing; the essence; as, the core of a subject.
The core beliefs are the most important beliefs, and they are what all the other beliefs are oriented around. Context is important here. When I say core beliefs, we have been talking about morals and politics and law. We have not been talking about the supernatural. If someone believes in ghosts, more power to them, but these are not the beliefs we have been talking about. We have been talking about beliefs in terms of moral convictions.
Everyone has beliefs, and everyone has core beliefs.
bloomj31: Btw I think these are all really interesting questions but unlike you I think they're incredibly relevant to understanding human behavior and the human condition. I think that to truly understand human action, one has to truly understand the piece of organic machinery responsible for it: the human brain. Until we truly understand the human brain we can't really understand all the things that it generates, whether that be a sense of numbers, music, storing an image, understanding and generating language, formulating an interpersonal ethical system, a "core belief" or anything else really.
Well, I don't recall saying they were irrelevant to understanding human behavior or the human condition. What I said earlier was:
gotlucky: I value man because I do, ceteris paribus. I don't need a reason. Sure, evolutionary psychology might be able to provide a reason as to why most people value reciprocity (the golden rule), but ultimately the why is not relevant to the function of the premise. Someone either values the golden rule and uses it as a premise, or one does not.
I value man because I do, ceteris paribus. I don't need a reason. Sure, evolutionary psychology might be able to provide a reason as to why most people value reciprocity (the golden rule), but ultimately the why is not relevant to the function of the premise. Someone either values the golden rule and uses it as a premise, or one does not.
One does not have to understand every aspect of the brain in order to make the claims I have been making. Why people value the golden rule is irrelevant to its function as a premise. In other words, if someone values the golden rule, there are certain conclusions we can derive. For example, libertarians value the golden rule and the NAP is a legal realization of the golden rule. That is the premise. From there, we can derive all sorts of conclusions.
But what happens if someone does not value the golden rule or has other values that conflict with it. Well, then we cannot derive the same conclusions. But guess what? It does not matter why someone values the golden rule. It does not matter if someone values it out of empathy or out of fear. If the golden rule is taken as a premise, then we can derive certain conclusions.
That is my point. Not that empathy and fear or what 2+2 looks like in the brain is irrevelant to human behavior or the human condition. I don't recall ever stating that, and it does not follow from the point I actually made.
bloomj31: We can talk about "core beliefs" and their logical implications all day long but until we understand how they're generated in the brain, until we understand how these things function within the brain, how they even inform action and to what extent, whether or not there are other things informing action and whether or not we are aware of them etc etc etc, I don't think we can make meaningful conclusions about human behavior as it relates to "core beliefs."
Well this just isn't true. As I just demonstrated above, the premises and what follow are what matters. Given that someone values the NAP, these are the conclusions. That is all. It is not necessary to know why Murray Rothbard valued the NAP and why I value the NAP to understand what the conclusions are. As far as I know, we actually have different reasons for valuing it. He tried to use some kind of objective reasoning through Natural Law (which I reject), and I just claim to value it simply because I do. But it doesn't matter. We both value it, and there are certain conclusions etc etc etc.
bloomj31: Perhaps the brain doesn't separate values into categories the way we might consciously think it does. Perhaps our values are far more contextually, state and historically based (to borrow from Kurzban.) Perhaps what "we" value is heavily dependent on a number of different genetic and environmental factors and perhaps this process isn't accessible to the conscious mind. I can't be sure but I really do think a lot of the evidence from the cognitive sciences suggests this view may be accurate. I think it's absolutely worth investigating.
Values certainly are context related. After all, before 1870 (or 1880 or 1890, whatever), the age of consent was 12 in America. Today it is much higher. So obviously some values of some people are context related. But notice that the golden rule has been stated in various forms for thousands of years. That doesn't seem to vary so much. So context seems to be far more relevant regarding values about the age of consent, but context does not seem to have the same degree of relevance regarding the golden rule. Obviously there is still some context, as many people don't understand the implications of the golden rule, but the point is that context seems to be much less relevant regarding the golden rule.
Those are some interesting points, I will give thought to this. As of now I think I want to take a step back, continue my studies and put this talk on hold. Well put though.