New Discovery

Also, I edited about half this post before you replied, you may want to read the edits:

viewtopic.php?p=2729750#p2729750

Peacegirl: This isn’t my first rodeo! I’ve been around for quite awhile! lol

People are not all like that.

Phyllo brought sociopaths up as well, and you scoffed at him.

Peacegirl: I didn’t scoff at him. I just told him he’s looking at what occurs in today’s environment.

Ecmandu: These people consider it a calculated risk to terrorize human beings, and many who are caught don’t try to avoid it, they’ll be like, “yeah, I guess you caught me, but I had a good run for awhile”

Peacegirl: You are right. Some people are willing to take the risk.

Ecmandu: They accept the consequences if they come to bear, like eating a nectarine … it’s almost a nothing, they’ve prepared their entire lives to being caught.

Peacegirl: They probably know eventually they’ll get caught.

Ecmandu: For them, it’s better to go to prison for 50 years than to not have killed one innocent.

Peacegirl: Yes that’s true. They have no feelings.

Ecmandu: I’d say in general about you, you are very sheltered and have not “been around the block” once yet, let alone many times.

Peacegirl: This isn’t my first rodeo! I’ve been around for quite awhile! lol

Peacegirl,

Every single reply that you made to my post that you replied to, demonstrates beyond all reasonable doubt that you haven’t even been around the block even once.

I’m not even going to bother with all of it, but I’ll just take this part:

Peacegirl stated: I didn’t scoff at him. I just told him he’s looking at what occurs in today’s environment.(in response to phyllo)

Ecmandu’s reply: phyllo is telling you that because this is today’s environment, nobody will be deterred in your system. Your system is psychopath heaven!!!

Literally, you’re entire philosophy, this silly book, is nothing but psychopath heaven.

So you state something like: “well if everyone obeyed me, the world will be at peace!!”

Billions of people have tried that argument before!!

It doesn’t work!

If I WANTED TO WRITE (as a psychopath) the book that would bring me psychopath heaven, and the psychopathic children of my children of my children psychopathic heaven as well… I’d write this book!!!

People who haven’t been this sheltered are not that dumb.

Actually, if they didn’t give you the benefit of the doubt of just not being life wise… they’d have to conclude that YOU !! Are a psychopath!! Trying to trick all of us !!

I can’t waste my time responding to your lack of insight as well as your lack of robust investigation. Like I said, compatibilists think they have disclosed something great therefore they’re extremely defensive but all they’ve done is repackaged free will with the same problems that we have dealt with for centuries, but also in terms of having nothing new to bring to the table that could actually be of benefit to our world!

And MagsJ goes at me from my replies…

But will leave this one alone.

I can actually start a whole thread as a proof that this is more offensive than my reply earlier!

There is nothing remotely offensive about her reply to you at all
Address what she is saying instead of making such silly assertions
For this is a serious topic that deserves contributions of substance

She’s stating: don’t judge anyone, especially psychopaths, because they need the least judgement of anyone …

That’s a line that you don’t cross in any species.

She literally thinks that if you are kind to psychopaths, that world will be at peace, and that the world not being at peace, is because we aren’t kind to psychopaths, that it’s OUR fault if we get tortured by psychopaths.

This is not the way existence works.

It’s extremely inflammatory.

She is completely negating the concept of boundaries.

Besides, she already lost the debate by calling it the highest natural law, when nobody follows it.

That’s laughable.

That is not what I’m saying AT ALL! It’s your lack of understanding that’s getting in the way!!

This book is about preventing the psychopathic mind from developing in the first place, not in condoning behavior that none of us want. You are displaying extreme ignorance Ecmandu!

OMG, you’re out in left field! Our fault if we get tortured by psychopaths? Did I say that? I am only trying to show, as much as you can’t stand to hear it, that determinism prevents the very acts of crime that all of the punishment in the world could never achieve. I already said that during the transition to this new world, if there are people that are so far gone, so mentally deranged, that they have no conscience at all, then this principle may not help them and they will need to be institutionalized. But as a new generation is born, the kind of environment that created these psychopaths will no longer be a factor. Mental illness will be virtually wiped out!! No more psychopaths and no more sociopaths. Wouldn’t that make you happy, or does it hurt your pride to think that your precious compatibilism (that you believe you’ve proved) only perpetuates the same old status quo?

You are right, this is not the way existence works as long as we are living in a free will environment. Our entire civilization is based on the belief that will is free. It’s inflammatory because you don’t understand this knowledge one whit.

Just read the second chapter and there are some serious flaws in it that have to be addressed :

The distance of the Earth from the Sun was not a determined event [ it actually took 200 million years for the Earth to form ]
It was a random event whereby all possible outcomes had an equal chance of occurring which is the opposite of determinism
So using the strong anthropic principle and fine tuning arguments as a reason to justify human existence is entirely fallacious

There is no mathematical certainty at all that God exists - proofs are for hypotheses and conjectures not metaphysical beings

There is no evidence to suggest that the elimination of a genuine reason for blame will actually result in there being no more
Just because someone is not responsible for something does not mean they will not be blamed anyway - that will still happen
For the reasons as to why someone gets blamed for something are not always logical - sometimes it is something else entirely

The foundation of the book is very flawed if these first two chapters are anything to go by
They also ignore the fact that before a final choice is made the will of man is actually free

Apart from you and your father has anyone - especially philosophers - ever accepted the entire premise of the book unconditionally ?
If the answer to this question is no that might be telling you something important so have you ever considered any of the criticisms ?

That was not his discovery. If he was wrong about how long it took for the Earth to form, it’s an incidental. Please keep that in mind.

"

WOW! He never said God was a personal being. That was made very clear early on.
[i]
By a similar process of working our problem backwards we can
officially launch the Golden Age which necessitates the removal of all
forms of blame (the judgment of what is right for another) so that
each person knows he is completely free to do what he wants to do.
Although solving the problem of evil requires balancing an equation
of such magnitude, it is not difficult when we have our infallible slide
rule which God has given us as a guide.

By now I hope you
understand that the word God is a symbol for the source of everything
that exists, whereas theology draws a line between good and evil using
the word God only as a symbol for the former. Actually no one gave
me this slide rule, that is, no one handed it to me, but the same force
that gave birth to my body and brain compelled me to move in the
direction of satisfaction and for me to be satisfied after reading Will
Durant’s analysis of free will it was necessary to disagree with what
obviously was the reasoning of logic, not mathematics. I was not
satisfied, which forced me to get rid of my dissatisfaction by proving
that this philosopher did not know whereof he spoke.

To say that God
made me do this is equivalent to saying I was compelled, by my
nature, to move in this direction of greater satisfaction, which is
absolutely true. Definitions mean absolutely nothing where reality is
concerned. Regardless of what words I use to describe the sun;
regardless of how much there is I don’t know about this ball of fire
does not negate the fact that it is a part of the real world, and
regardless of what words I employ to describe God does not change the
fact that He is a reality. You may ask, “But isn’t there quite a
difference between seeing the sun and seeing God? I know that the
description of the sun could be inaccurate, but I know it is a part of
the real world. However, we cannot point to any particular thing and
say this is God, therefore we must assume because of certain things
that God is a reality, correct?”

We assumed energy was contained within the atom until a
discovery was made that proved this, and we also assumed or believed
that there was a design to this universe by the fact that the solar
system moves in such mathematical harmony. Did the sun, moon,
earth, planets and stars just fall into perfect order, or is there some
internal urgency pushing everything in a particular direction? Now
that it has been discovered that man’s will is not free and at the very
moment this discovery is made a mathematical demonstration
compels man to veer sharply in a new direction although still towards
greater satisfaction, then it can be seen just as clearly as we see the
sun that the mankind system has always been just as harmonious as
the solar system only we never knew it because part of the harmony
was this disharmony between man and man which is now being
permanently removed. [/i]

You’ll need to read the whole book at least twice. You’re jumping to a premature conclusion. Obviously, we can’t just stop blaming. That would make every crook happy as a lark. There will be a transitional period from one world to the other, which may be very gradual. As people become citizens, the police force will be reduced in just proportion.

If you are so sure the book is flawed then you must really understand it, so for starters what is the two-sided equation in your own words?

[quote="They also ignore the fact that before a final choice is made the will of man is actually free[/quote]
Absolutely not. Before a final choice is made man has a choice, but how can it be free when he cannot move in any other direction but “greater” satisfaction, not less? Your analysis so far is completely flawed and lacking depth.

What difference would that make surreptitious? Srsly??? I’ve been criticized by lots of people who are doing what you’re doing, making quick judgments without carefully reading the book or asking questions. They skim, can’t tell me what the discovery is, and then have the chutzpah to tell me it’s flawed! People rush to judgment especially when it doesn’t jive with their worldview. And even if it does, they will jump to the conclusion that it’s a religious work because he uses the word God. Amazing!

I think over time we will become a more moral species although we will both collectively and individually always be a work in progress
I can see the thinking in the book being applied to artificial intelligence that will be able to think in absolute terms but not to humans

I think that you have to accept criticism even if you do not agree with it as such which you seem unable to do
You cannot have the book discussed on a philosophy forum and not expect any because all works get criticised

I have read the first two chapters as you asked and gave you my take on them
If I was being close minded then I would not have bothered to read them at all

My opinion should not matter to you anyway but you should not dismiss it just because it is critical

You should print more extracts from the book as you did above because that way you may get more feedback from the posters here
Its actually easier to read in the forum format anyway - I think I will read the final chapter next as its a bit too repetitive otherwise

The main problem is that there is no way of knowing if what the book claims will come to pass as it will be long after anyone now reading it is dead

We will become a more moral species when hurting people stop hurting people, and the only way to accomplish that is to remove the hurt to those who have been hurt first which then causes them to strike back and on and on it goes…

I don’t mind being criticized if the criticism is valid. It’s not.

I’m glad you read the chapters, but you did not read them carefully enough. You probably skimmed them because you couldn’t even tell me what the discovery is. I can easily tell when someone hasn’t read the book in a way that would allow the concepts to sink in, but only to criticize and find loopholes that don’t exist. Your critique is scant and it’s certainly not balanced. Unfortunately, because of your comments people will decide that it’s not worth reading. Sad.

The principles are valid and sound. The criticism you made about the Earth is trivial. It would be like telling Einstein he was wrong because he made a mistake regarding a date. That’s what tells me you weren’t reading to grasp the knowledge but rather searching for anything you could find that would cause doubt. As I said, these trivialities have nothing to do with the validity and soundness of the discovery itself.

We can’t know how long it will take (it depends how quickly this knowledge can spread) but one thing is for sure, it must come about in time due to the fact that the discovery is sound and people will want what they see. Once it is recognized by science it won’t take but a relatively short period of time for the Great Transition to begin and the leaders of each nation to become our first citizens. Global peace will then be within our reach.

Even if we die before the Golden Age is here, we will know that our children or their children will benefit just as we have benefited from the generations that have come before us. Finally, if you begin to understand his chapter on death you will know that we (our consciousness) will be here to enjoy this new world, not our posterity.

Peacegirl,

More contradictions. So we have to judge before we become judgeless?!?!?

I see where you’re going here…

If everybody just acts perfectly, there’ll be no reason to judge, so you or this author sees, "well that means if we don’t judge, everyone will be perfect.

We have no choice but to judge… we are biological beings. Judgement is hardwired into DNA.

Psychopaths are determined to be born in this species, without jobs like soldiers or firemen or police officers, they just kill innocent people, that’s what they do. To get rid of them, you need a very sophisticated knowledge of the human genome.

Not someone who is themselves psychopathic saying, “if everyone obeys me the world will be at peace, obey me now!!”

Excellent point you make about psychopaths Ecmandu and one that peacegirl would have failed to factor in to her Utopian vision

Psychopaths do not understand the difference between right and wrong and would behave exactly the same in a blameless world
They would not understand why such a world would be any different for them because they would still do whatever they want to

In a perfect Utopia the criminally insane would still be themselves so everyone else being altruistic would have zero impact upon them
Psychopaths are not all of a sudden going to stop being psychopathic just because every one else has become entirely non judgemental

How seriously can I take someone who actually believes this…unless I assume that they believe it only because they were never able not to?

Sure, you can narrow this discussion down to the things that you assert are true and then just dismiss all the factors that don’t actually reinforce your own point of view as irrelevant. As though understanding how matter evolved into life evolved into brains evolved into minds evolved into your own particular self-conscious “I” is completely incidental to the author’s discovery.

It would be like physicists discovering that the multiverse does in fact exist, and someone insisting that, for the purposes of their own discussion, they want only this universe to be relevant. Even though the ecxistence of the multiverse might have profound implications for our own universe.

Or like someone living in Flatland able to demonstrate the existence of our own three dimensional world, and dismissing that as irrelevant to all that might be understood regarding the relationship between these two worlds.

Or like someone who was raised to believe their Christran beliefs were based only on the Old Testament alone, discovering that the New Testament existed…but then dismissing that is irrelevant to a discussion about Christianity.

That’s how I see you in a nutshell. There is what you believe. There is the comfort and consolation that what you believe provides you. And you’ll be damned if someone like me is going to insist on expanding the reach of the discussion if that might mean chipping away at this discovery. A world of words that, in my view, has become the psychological foundation [defense mechanism] onto which you anchor “I”.

Note to others:

Do you not see the gap I am talking about here? Do you not see how our own understanding of these relationships [including mine] can only be but considerably short of all that can possibly be known about existence itself?

Who cares? If the person who says 1 + 1 = 2 and the person who says 1 + 1 = 3 are equally compelled by nature to say only what they must? And if somebody caring or not caring is equally compelled by nature to care or not to care…?

The truth is ever and always the embodied of natural laws. If, in fact, that is actually true itself.

Clearly, in order to understand that you would have to understand what or who is responsible for nature [existence] itself. But you won’t go there for all the reasons I noted above. That and the fact that [so far] nature hasn’t compelled you to go there.

Back to this: I couldn’t have said it better myself!

You forgot [again] to point out that nature compelled me to go back to autonomy.

Only you are adament that in order to understand fully what “being human” entails others must be wholly in sync with the assumptions embedded in that particular “intellectual contraption” you call The Discovery.

Note to others:

In different words, please explain to me how, if “I” is necessarily, inherently a part of nature, this doesn’t compel me to keep repeating myself. Please explain to me in turn how my embodiment of “greater satisfaction” is not as well the embodiment only of nature itself.

Sigh…

What difference does it make [for all practical purposes] what I agree or disagree with here when [for all practical purposes] I am always being compelled to by nature? We clearly understand the [for all practical purposes] relationship between “I” and nature in very different ways.

Over and again, when I ask you to bring this all down to earth and note how the author has actually demonstrated why his principled assessment works in regards to actual human interactions – actual choices, actual behaviors – I am told that the “proof” will become clear only in the future when “it is shown that humans cannot desire to hurt one another when not to hurt them becomes the preferable choice.”

And how will I do that unless and until nature compels me to want to continue to make progress?

Oh, like 1 + 1 = 2, is the same as peace + brotherhood = the author’s own prescription for a progressive future. Value judgments as mathematical equations.

All I can note here is nature compels me to note that, from my frame of mind, this frame of mind is so incredibly naive, I wouldn’t even know where to begin in responding to it.

Then back to this knot:

If everything I think and feel and say and do and want and desire is necessarily a manifestation of nature’s laws, then how does time here get broken into “before I decide” and “after I decide”? How does the author demonstrate this other than by merely asserting it to be true? How could this actually be proven in a particular context? Other than by understanding the defintions and the meaning he gives to the words in his world or words discovery as he does?

Somehow in your head you make this before and after distinction between “I” desiring something and nature. As though “I” really does have some control over what it wants and desires.

Whereas I see all aspects of the brain – the more and the less primitive parts – as coordinating everything to be wholly in sync with the laws of matter.

Always, the way someone thinks about all this. Always about the definitions. Why? Because [in my view] this allows you keep the discussion up in the clouds of abstraction, and general description, and “principles”.

Indeed. But, in my view, the laws of nature compelled you to conclude that before you in fact did. But only if, in turn, the laws of nature compelled me to conclude that before I did.

Whatever reason can there be in a wholly determined universe but that nature compels my brain/“I” to not grasp it here and now? I see no break between “I” before concluding I don’t grasp it, and “I” after concluding I don’t grasp it. It’s all nature…past, present and future.

This is basically either 1] nonsensical or 2] unintelligable to me. I can’t help but sound as I do. Why? Becasue nature compels me to. But: if I do try a little harder how is that not also because nature compels me to? Nature may not be forcing me to as when we imagine someone forcing another to do something with a gun to his head, but that is because we cannot point to nature as we can the man with the gun. But if nature compels the man to point the gun how can we say that he is to blame for doing so? How can we hold him responsible as you seem to hold me responsible for not trying harder?

What on earth does that have to do with my point though? Even in the future, if a woman becomes pregnant and doesn’t want to be, there’s the pain and grievences embedded in shredding the unborn or in forcing the woman to give birth.

Similarly:

This in no way really addresses my point regarding conflicting goods in your so-called “progressive” future. It’s just a frame of mind that you have concocted in order to feel good about the author, his discovery and all the peace and prosperity heading our way as a result of them.

Thus in my view…

Clearly, we are in two very, very different discussions here. And imagine how embarrassed one of us would be if we did have some measure of autonomy.

Yes, but his discoveries all unfolded given the laws of nature in the either/or world. He could demonstrate his own discoveries. Why? Because they did in fact reflect that part of nature which is true for all of us. But how would he have gone about demonstrating that he accomplished all of this autonomously? How would he have gone about demonstrating that an electric current used to, say, execute a prisoner was a “progressive” thing to do?

Then my own bottom line:

Again: What does this have to do with the point I am making? Unless, of course, nature simply isn’t able to take things like that into account.

What he said.

Or, rather, the way that I would spin it. :wink:

Yes, we judge many things to determine if something is worth pursuing, but this is not the kind of judgment I’m talking about. Stop conflating this word to make it look like you’re right when you’re dead wrong. :stuck_out_tongue:

It’s the exact opposite. When we stop judging, everyone will be perfect. But remember this does not mean we suddenly stop judging just because we know FOR A FACT that man’s will is not free. If you had read the chapters you would have known that. You know nothing about this knowledge, and it shows!

Thinking is hardwired. Judgment against someone because you judge him to be wrong and worthy of repercussions is not hardwired into anyone’s DNA.

Is English your second language or am I missing something? Psychopaths are not born to be psychopaths without the environment to trigger it.

Oh, so now you’re a great scientist on top of being a great compatibilist. You know for a fact that every person that becomes psychopathic has something wrong in his genome? Shouldn’t they have identified this genome already with such sophisticated technology?

Who said “obey me now”? You are just pissed because your logic does not prove that man has free will, let alone anything that can help our world. Sorry Ecmandu, you lose! :laughing:

You would not disagree with Einstein because he was recognized. You would listen quite attentively and if you didn’t understand something you would question earnestly to get a clearer understanding. But you certainly wouldn’t argue. You disagree because this author was an unknown, and because of this you don’t take this knowledge seriously. But he did have a discovery and it will become recognized one day. Then, just like with Einstein, you would not even think of arguing. This can work in reverse if science says something is true. People accept it at face value and don’t question any further. This can be dangerous and lead to apparent truths that have graduated into fact and no one dare criticize or ostracism is the name of the game.

How do you know this surreptitious75? Prove to me that they would act the same being born in a world where not only no one blames, but no one is hurt by the many events in life that lead to hatred whether it’s used against oneself or against others.

It’s more than being non judgmental. It’s changing the environment entirely. I did say that as we make the transition, there may be people who are so far gone that they cannot be rehabilitated at all. Therefore, they will need to be institutionalized just like a mad dog would, but this is a tiny percentage of the population. Why are you focusing on this when most criminals are run of the mill crooks? They are the professional thieves who know right from wrong. They would never desire to steal, rob, murder, under changed conditions that alter their preference not to take from others as that alternative that gives them greater satisfaction.