Do you tend to dislike people who step on bugs?

So what was the point of your reply to my question?

To tell me that figuring motivations is difficult or even impossible?

People manage to do it often.

To tell me that we have little understanding or control?

People have some understanding and some control.

To tell me it’s all determined and we can’t change anything?

Nobody knows what is determined. You only know “it was always determined” after it has happened.

You don’t know which pins you will knock down until after you release the bowling ball and it hits the pins.

Yes, the part that, in regard to stepping on bugs for any number of personal reasons, is, in my opinion, rooted in dasein.

Yes, but how far removed is that for mere mortals from the total understanding and control that most attribute to God. Besides, how likely is the part where mere mortals either step or do not step on bugs going to factor into Judgment Day for them?

Who only knows that unequivocally If not God?

Huh? If the laws of physics were fully within our grasp, it could be calculated precisely. We just don’t know if that includes the brain ordering us – compelling us – to release the ball. Or, sure, whether or not there is a bug on the lane that the ball [or our shoe] might squash to smithereens.

wrong thread.

Let’s just say that I’m not interested in the stuff that interests you and vice versa. (Ditto on the other thread.)

Bug boy and KT can have their thread back.

As long as you allow me to reduce you down to “retorts” like this, I feel entitled to claim victory.

Me, I’m reduced down to this: =D>

You can claim whatever you want.

I read your posts and I have no interest in responding. For various reasons.

I gave you a short form explanation of why you should not be expecting a reply. I could have just gone silent but I decided to say something as an ending. It wasn’t a retort.

So that’s it.

It’s been a slice.

Ciao

Okay, only mean it this time.

I’m not trying to be flattering, but your concepts are fascinating to me. Did you know that some people believe that once you accept the revelation that you don’t have free will, that you gain free will from that point on? They see it sort of like gaining self-awareness for the first time, by acknowledging your lack of awareness, your lack of ability freely influence things. Somehow, you have more agency through that revelation. I feel like the idea is missing internal logical, but it’s interesting all the same.

Even then they could only partially explain any behavioral motivations, at least if we are assuming the framework in question. As you state:

I think so.

Hmm… If someone chooses to perform an action, it must be meaningful, you say? Hmm… tell me, what does it signify when someone puts their pants on their left leg first vs. right leg first, or switches between? What does it signify if someone puts water then toothpaste on their toothbrush vs toothpaste then water? What does it signify if someone trims their right fingernails before their fingernails? There are such things at choices are not meaningful or consequential.

Activity I could have done instead? You make it sound like people are constantly running some sort of computerized cost benefit-analysis so that each action is preplanned and well calculated. If you think so, you’re very wrong. Some actions are spontaneous, irrational, and pointless. The decision to skim a rock across a lake isn’t “meaningful or consequential.” It’s pointless act of idle boredom.

That’s not fair; I didn’t read the emoji.

That is false parallel that might even be dishonest. In the case of a child wanting to kill squirrels, my concern would not be “why is he choosing this activity over others.” It would be, why the hell is killing a squirrel at all? That actually would be cruel, unlike mindlessly stepping on non-sentient ants. Your concern of making a “slight extra effort to kill something” (your words) would not be on my radar. It wouldn’t matter how much effort it took for him, how much energy it expended, or what other “activities” were turned down. You’re fixated on this ridiculous economy of time and effort and missed activities, when YOU are missing the boat by not appreciating why killing a squirrel is messed up. Hint: it has nothing to do with any of the nonsense you mentioned.

When someone kill a squirrel, there is DEFINITELY a reason behind it. Killing a squirrel takes a certain type of nerve and morbidity, a lack of empathy, and a disregard for another animal’s pain. Stepping on bugs, on the other hand, is business as usual. They don’t experience those things.

Notice your examples: In both cases the person in question ends up with the same results. The SAME results. They want to get their pants on and they do. And so with the others. So your examples
are
not
related
to
what
we
are talking
about.

In your example you repeat a behavior of killing bugs when you could do something else. You could kill them or not. Most people do not kill bugs ‘for no reason.’ They do it accidentally by walking and stepping on them or they kill them for a reason. We have given reasons: pests in the house, pests on food, etc. You do it ‘for no reason’ which means the bugs are not causing you pain (bites) potentially messing up your food, keeping you awake and so on.

I am asking you why you do this.

I like skipping rocks across a lake because it requires some skill, which I got better at, even as a child. I like the way it looks. I like the challenge. I can, unlike you, admit that I like doing it. It is a choice based on what I prefer doing in that moment.

I can take some responsibility for choosing to do it. For you it is a spontaneous impulse out of nowhere, random, not connected to your likes and dislikes, like a tick or a spasm.

You present a straw man argument above I did not make. Put words in my mouth. Cost benefit analyses…etc.

Earlier give the example of the cars, and I point out that you have not yet done what people do when they choose the color of their cars. I specifically said they would say they like a certain color more than another. It is a choice with consequences they like. You can’t manage to do what the people would do IN YOUR OWN EXAMPLE. When this is pointed out, you admit nothing.

Then you give the examples above that are not analogous to your choice to kill bugs because the results are different. And now you can’t even imagine or present yourself as not being able to imagine why someone would choose to skip rocks. It’s a spontaneous random reaction like someone saying fuck when they have Tourette’s.

Here’s a solution for you with your problem.

Think of the disliking of people who dislike people who step on bugs as being like your stepping on bugs. You step on bugs for no reason at all. They dislike you for as a spontaneous reaction. A tick.

So if you dislike them for disliking you, you’re a hypocrite, but the great thing is you can change. They’re being irrational and spontaneous in disliking you. Try to accept them as you expect them to accept you. You can be the Jesus of bug killers, actually accepting others for their irrational reactions just as YOU expect them to accept you for yours. Re-read your posts and find the whine in there. Then see if you are living up to your own whining about others.

Compared to those people, it took me alittle more time to dislike you. They saved time compared to me. They were spontaneous and irrational I came at my disliking you rationally. Through finding you to be a disingenous discussion partner. But you won’t experience me anymore so, it won’t be a problem for you.

I won’t waste my time with you here.

Why is killing squirrels “messed up”?

Squirrels have awareness of their environment and they have feelings. They feel pain and experience distress. That is why killing them is messed up.

People who kill squirrels can say that none of that really matters.

They draw the line differentiating what can be killed without concern, in a different place than you do.

People who object to the killing of bugs draw the line based on another criteria. Probably based on the principle that no living creatures ought to be killed. Or killed for food. Or only killed to protect oneself.

That’s one way of answering my OP, I’ll grant you. They have their own set of rules they made for themselves. I guess that’s a good reason?

At least you gave a real answer, though, instead of doing some meaningless behavioral motivation probe like karpal tunnnel.

Impetuous child-minded behavior is disliked by more considerate mature-minded people because of its disruptive and often dangerous effects. Mature-minded people are disturbed by child-minded people playing with loaded guns even though the child-minded doesn’t think it is an issue.

I think this is merely an issue of more thoughtful people being uneasy around the actions of less thoughtful people.

That sort of thinking – compatibilism? – makes less sense to me. If you go from stepping on bugs for a reason to accepting that you are compelled by the laws of nature to step on bugs for that reason then how are you not in turn compelled by the laws of matter to reframe it all as “gaining self-awareness for the first time” of what you are doing?

In a wholly determined universe as “I” understand it here and now, I was never able to not type these words and you were never able to not read them. And what the words convey are also inherent, necessary descriptions of the only possible things that we can ever think, feel, say and do. About bugs and everything else.

Which, it would seem, is why [compelled by nature or not] we invent the Gods…or a God, the God, my God.

With the existence of Kant’s “transcending font” there would be the all-knowing vantage point able to explain why someone – why anyone – would step on bugs. Either for no reason or for any particular reason. And if there is a dispute among mere mortals as to whether this is something that is rational or moral, God would be there again to resolve it.

And, in my view, it is precisely in order to avoid these profoundly problematic complexities that some become objectivists. They think themselves – again, compelled by nature or not – into believing that they are in sync with their own true self able to know all that needs to be known about stepping on bugs in order for them to judge the behaviors of others that either do or do not step on them and for whatever reason. Or for no reason at all.

Here, alas, my own “I” is “fractured and fragmented”. Whereas for folks like Karpel Tunnel there seems to be this “deep down inside him” Self that just somehow knows whether and when to be revulsed in regard to stepping on bugs.

I thought that whole “determinism versus freewill conundrum” was debunked.

Without causal determinism a freewill could never come about. And once it comes about only causal determinism gives it prominence to motivate action. Freewill is never, at any time, free of causal determinism - before, during, or after. And then there is the reasonable concern that freewill was never actually about being free from determinism anyway.

So, if this is a brilliant assessment or an utterly foolish one, how would we go about determining if it was ever only the assessment that you were ever only able to make?

I don’t think that you individually are ever able to determine anything. You seem to always just want to change the subject and usually toward one person’s thoughts.

There is a difference between “What is the reason behind this” (causality/determinism) and “What is the purpose behind this” (intention/goals). There being some causality behind people disliking others for stepping on bugs is different than there being some purpose in disliking people who step on bugs.

And both of those are actually distinct from the question as to whether someone dislikes others for stepping on bugs (the actual question of the thread).

That’s not my point. If I am not able to change anything then I am compelled by the laws of nature “to seem to always just want to change the subject and usually toward one person’s thoughts.”

And, in a determined universe as I understand it, any differences that we point out are only those differences we were ever able to point out.

Just as the reasons or lack of reasons we give for stepping or not stepping on bugs was never not going to be otherwise.

Same with distinctions. We make the ones we do because whatever brought into existence both matter and the immutable laws it abides by either is or is not applicable to the human brain.

Those interactions that, among others, neuroscientists continue to explore experientially and experimentally. And, to the best of my current knowledge, the definitive final verdict here [compelled by nature or not] is not yet in.