This is a very good explanation. In public discourse we're also looking for definite answers and you really can't get too abstract; both of these things don't work well for the armchair philosopher. You're right about the tightrope though.

I think that despite these barriers we are seeing some real-world impact, and the first field that comes to mind would be Singer's effective altruism as well as Singer's general impact on the vegan movement.

Can only a politician be a capable President? — Brett

Yes, Eisenhower. Consistently ranked in the top 10 Presidents by both parties.

I see a capable President as just a President who is capable of achieving his objectives, not that those objectives are necessarily good. An effective, capable President is not necessarily a good President. I can think of worse things than an incapable President.

The important thing is that the US, like you, is a drunken maniac who will bomb anything for any reason.

As long as everybody remembers that, we're good.

Not a bad strategy from a game theory perspective.

With having a strong nuclear deterrence, total superiority in the air and basically with their own armed forces being superior to other, having their foes in shambles (Syria in civil war, Egypt just barely hanging there), and having the sole Superpower as an obedient ally ready and wiling to rush to their help? It's not a dire situation as you think.

We're talking about Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.

but the fact is that Netanyahu has chosen this low intensity conflict as the normal for Israel.

Israel funds anti-Iranian regime groups and Iran funds anti-Israel groups. If Iran were to withdraw support from Hezbollah and Hamas I'd suspect there could be serious inroads made to normalizing relations.

And the ugly truth is that actually WW3 didn't happen. Yes, we came close, but we didn't have it. — ssu

That indeed in might have happened during their war of Independence. Afterwards, they crushed their enemies quite well. Today is different than 1948. — ssu

I understand that Israel won in 1948, 1967, and 1973. I also understand that there were no nuclear strikes between the US-USSR during the cold war or for the matter India-Pakistan.

You seem to regard these facts as inevitabilities though, and I'd like to push back against that notion. If we embrace free will we should understand that there could have been a nuclear holocaust and we've basically just got lucky that it hasn't happened. We should view our current situation as extremely fortunate. There were many, many critical junction points where things could have gone differently both in regard to a nuclear holocaust and Israel's victories in '48, '67, and '73. You know that in 1967 Israel did a very controversial pre-emptive strike against the Egyptians which took out their air force. It was hotly debated. Israeli tank commanders outmanuevered their enemies in tanks battles in 1973 despite being outnumbered; it was not a certain victory.

What do you think about this view of history?

To me it seems obvious that Iran acquiring nuclear weapons is a pretty major national security concern for Israel. The question is to what to extent Israel should go to prevent this from happening.

Well, I was kind of drunk when I wrote it (I am more drunk now.)

I take issue with the notion of indirect responsibility though because it seems to be essentially hollow: perhaps a village or a town bears some abstract "responsibility" for a school shooter.

Ultimately, the responsibility falls on the perpetrator. And I'm not blaming iran for this one; I do believe it was an honest mistake.

If your boss gives you a negative performance review at work and then you go home and beat your wife in a rage is your boss responsible for that?

But naturally the rhetoric HAS TO BE that Iranians are crazy Mullahs hell bent on destroying Israel even if that means that Iran will be destroyed. Yet it doesn't make sense. Never has.

It might not make sense to you. The Israelis still have reason to be worried because it threatens their entire existence. Israel has had several wars where, if it had lost, it would have been finished as a state and its people would have been at the mercy of its enemies. Yes, I've heard the term "second holocaust" tossed around more than a few times.

Yes, maybe in a world where all of Israel's enemies have nukes everyone acts reasonable and rational and everyone understands mutually assured destruction. But the costs of being wrong on this one are extremely high. Even against the "rational" Soviets we came nail-bitingly close to nuclear war and in some cases the choice came down the actual button-pushers. And that was without religion.

I've never called him a terrorist. I understand what you're saying here. Let me ask you though: From a moral standpoint, do you think Soleimani deserved what he got, roughly speaking?

Could you tell me the last time Bush or Trump used machine guns on hundreds of peaceful protesters protesting the government? That happened last month in Iran.

You realize most Iranians do not like Soleimani? Head over to r/iran if you don't believe me. I literally haven't heard anyone sympathize with him the way you have. It's absurd to the point where I feel like you're on the Ayatollah's payroll. It's just kind of funny because no one really sympathizes with this mass-murdering monster EXCEPT YOU and the Iranian regime. American Democrats and European liberals certainly don't. Normal Iranians don't support him. Only you seem to sympathize with him for some reason.

He was doing his job the same way your generals do.

Do American generals also murder and imprison their own people when they protest? This happened by the hundreds maybe a month or two ago. I feel like you're one of those people who would wear a Che Guevara shirt because, hey, he's just sticking it to the Americans, right?

The most likely explanation is that Iran made a mistake and shot it down.

Zero reported US casualties. Now would be a good time to de-escalate. Iran has now saved face; lets get back to business as usual.

There's a billion reasons for this. Historically, Jews were excluded from many professions but one of the professions that they were allowed to do was money-lending which of course got them very popular. /s

In New York today we're seeing a very sad phenomenon; Hasidic Jews are big targets because of certain unfair practices that they're accused of but also because of how insular they're accused of being. They're also extremely visible. If you looked at Nazi propaganda there's a similarity here: Jews are portrayed as being insular, only caring about themselves, and from there the Nazis additionally portray them as dirty and just a general blight upon humanity.

I see some of this rhetoric echoed today in reddit threads. Not so much the "dirty" part, but certainly the part about Jews being insular, not caring about anyone else except themselves, being unfair landlords etc. and that these attacks are basically just "punching up." It's interesting because no one is really justifying the attacks, they just claim to be "providing context."

For the record, I was raised a secular Jew and I can tell you that secular Jews tend to avoid Hasidic Jews. Very interesting debate about this going on within the Jewish community between those who support the Hasids and those who don't.

What evidence have you seen - read: not what evidence can you come up with now - that led you to this conclusion? Evidence you can now find is also useful, but I think it is important for us to notice if we are making decisions because someone asserted something and never justified that assertion.

It's all over the mainstream media and both sides of the aisle- democrats and republicans seem to agree on the basic facts here. Soleimani's complicity seems to be universally accepted.

I actually work in intelligence. I could go into work tomorrow and get the inside scoop, but it's not like I could ever actually deliver any physical evidence to the general public (or even really talk about what I heard.) Additionally, for all I know, the reports have been doctored. At some point you just sort of need to throw in with it. I think the connection between Iran and known terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah (which have been behind American deaths) as well as sectarian groups in Syria has been pretty well established.

Imagine if Vietnam or Laos or Cambodia killed Kissinger for crimes they considered he committed during the Vietnam war. They did this while Kissinger was visiting France and while he was an advisor in some way to a current president.

You wouldn't do this at the negotiating table, but out in the field I think Kissinger would have been a legitimate target for the vietnamese. I think a better comparison would be Westmoreland, who was actually a general - but yeah, absolutely a legitimate target for the Vietnamese. generals are absolutely legitimate military targets.

This act will very likely do just the opposite, except for certain interests: the arms and intelligence industries for example.

Yes, tensions could very well be inflamed. However, this comes after a long string of transgressions/attacks from Iran who previously believed themselves untouchable. With this strike that veil of impunity has been shattered. I'll make it very clear that I don't want war with Iran. Yes, we've raised the stakes but the iranians were really becoming quite bold thinking that we couldn't touch them. hopefully this will help prevent further bold escalations from iran because they know they are no longer untouchable. of course, the jury is still out on this one and the results will unfold over years.

Why?

The hardliners certainly hate our guts. Sometimes people just hate your guts.

Which is why he helped you fight the Taliban?

yes, we will occasionally share interests with groups that we aren't normally friendly with. would it mean kim jung il likes us if he dislikes isis?

No, it doesn't. You're not thinking. Try the analogy again. Try to think about not fucking yourself up just to get to fuck the other guy up. Or bite the bullet and admit you don't really care about how many people get killed, you care about being made to look bad by a country you consider inferior.

Bro, from a game theory perspective it makes sense to push the envelope if your opponent isn't responding. and that's exactly what happened; suleiman was brazen, he didn't even attempt to hide where he was going and he'd take selfies because he considered himself untouchable. you need to look at history and understand that sometimes the cost of inaction is worse than the cost of action. obviously, in this case, we'll just never know.

What are these, specifically, and why do they require you to get into an armed conflict with each other as opposed to finding some kind of mutually less destructive accommodation?

you keep implying that we can have peace and be best friends with iran but you never really come up with anything concrete... you just say de-escalate, but this term is pretty vague. so far you haven't suggested any actual alternative. the two nations won't even speak to each other directly. the iran govenrment as of 2018 refuses to negotiate with the US.

The guy is sticking pins in us because he genuinely hates us and has been hating us for decades. This is the regime, not the people. We can play nice with them, but that doesn't change the fact that we have diametrically opposed interests in the middle east. What Iran is doing now in targeting the US via proxy makes sense for it. It makes sense to ramp up the aggression if the US isn't responding too. That's just good strategy.

I don't want a war. We don't have a war, at least not officially. You're acting like this strike just started a war out of nothing and that's just not the situation.

I can't plot a positive economic or strategic outcome to this for the US ruling classes that beats sticking with the Iran deal and encouraging progressive forces in the country. Maybe I lack a sufficiently Machiavellian imagination or something. Anyone here see a war being good for the US?

No one wants a war, but given these facts:

-The general was behind hundreds of american deaths in iraq.
-He was behind the recent embassy attack.
-Was very likely to be planning more attacks, and never even really attempted to hide his involvement.

What is your solution here? To my understanding, the attacks in recent years have gotten worse and we really haven't responded to iran directly so that just emboldened them. Don't tell me the solution is empowering progressive movements because the regime just opened fire on unarmed protesters last month and killed hundreds. If it was as easy as getting a nicer iranian leadership into power that would be the obvious solution but I don't think that's really plausible.

Gary Kasparov had an interesting series of tweets:

What is happening between the US and Iran is a consequence of what I describe in Winter Is Coming: an aggressive dictatorship's sense of impunity leading to the crossing of one line too far. Deterrence is based on standing up against small aggressions in order to prevent big ones, when the price will be much higher. Many years of success led Iran & Soleimani to feel invincible, to attack a US embassy, when of course a US president had to respond. This is how appeasement kills. This is why inaction can be a deadly choice. It raises the stakes, postpones the inevitable, and encourages aggressors to assume they can act with impunity until the eventual response is massive and destabilizing. Action has clear costs because it is the reality of the road taken, making it politically unattractive. Inaction hopes to pass the dire consequences and blame to a successor, as has happened with Syria and Iran. I wish Trump had a competent team capable of strategic planning and of inspiring the trust of allies and the fear of enemies. That is far from the case. But I can't criticize the killing of a mass-murdering terrorist mastermind & reminding his ilk that they are not safe. We'll never know how many more innocents Qasem Soleimani would have murdered or how many hundreds of thousands more refugees he'd have helped create. But don't pretend you know that what is to come is worse than the world with such a person in it.

END

I didn't say it was going to lead to peace. It's probably not going to lead to war either. The strike comes after a long string of Iranian offenses. On a moral level, I have no problem with the strike. On a strategic level, I think the jury is still out but based on the information I have now I don't hate it given the history of past Iranian transgressions. Yes it could have been executed better and more people could have been informed about it.

There is no war. Neither the US or Iran wants a war.

And how in the world did you "cacluclate" what the most straight-forward cause is?

I'm not calculating anything. We use "cause" in a variety of ways in the english language, and I can't think of any of them that directly attribute inaction to a cause because it doesn't make sense. The closest I can think of is the inaction of others tacitly encouraging a perpetrator to commit an offense.

To be clear here, a bystander could still be responsible but when we use "cause" we're talking about a chain of events, not non-events.

I have to ask you though, if I don't save a drowning man am I guilty of second degree murder? If I don't donate to a charity and a child dies from a lack of mosquito nets am I also guilty of murder?

Inaction IS an action. Inaction is: Not doing X but doing Y instead, where X is the action in question. So inaction is just doing Y. Inaction is just as much an active action/choice as any other.

I get it, but we're talking about causation, i.e. which events led to X. It's just how we understand this concept. If I ask you "what caused the hole in this wall" the most straight-forward answer is "Andy punched it" not "Andy punched it and also Jim, Pam, Michael, Tobey, etc. did not directly interfere or stop him."

Of course, bystanders can still be morally liable. But this is different from causing.

Yup. He made that case and said: So you should try to reduce suffering as much as possible through your action/inaction, inaction doesn't automatically mean you did nothing wrong because it's just as much an action as anything else

Yes, so bystanders can still be morally liable but this is different from causation.

Onto a bigger issue though: I can't stand moral systems which make insane demands from individuals. Why are you on a laptop when that money could have been sent to a child in Africa? Why have savings or investments when that money must be donated otherwise you're a murderer? If everyone followed this the entire economy would fall apart and there would be zero money to donate. Everybody would be impoverished and nobody would have any money to help. It's completely insane and I can't seriously contemplate it. Sorry, you've hit on one of my sore spots here.

I actually don't want to talk about how to get people to do more good, I'm actually tired of that topic and I'm complaining about it. I'm saying that it's all we talk about and I'm investigating why that is.

That's funny because I really don't discuss this topic very much if at all in philosophy. Certainly haven't discussed it that much around here.

If you're just trying to bash disingenuous virtue signaling then sure go ahead.

Morality can get a little emotional though. If you're going to take a totally amoral or flippantly nihilistic take on meta-ethics then yeah i guess you might face a little backlash. I don't think saying there's something objectively wrong with genocide should count as being disingenuously moralistic.

I agree with you but I am not exactly discussing the morality of the situation right now. I am asking whether or not you not saving someone is a cause for their drowning. I think the answer is yes

Inaction isn't a cause. If I ask you for a cause I would expect to hear a series of actions or events.

If I were to accept what you're saying the upshot of this is that even the best of us are all the cause of countless people's deaths so I guess everyone is basically a murderer or at least guilty of countless manslaughters.

Would you agree that our opinions in philosophy are more benevolent than we are?

Could you give me an example? Under the banner of philosophy you have everything from Hobbes to Rousseau to Rothbard to Marx. If you think philosophers are too high-minded look at Hobbes or Adam Smith.

The question is that if we look at what people are doing rather than talking about doing, what does that indicate?

If you want to talk about how to get people to be actually do more good you might want to go to a psychology forum or a sociology one. Philosophers work at identify the good.

If we're in an argument or discussion and I post a link to a 3 hour lecture or 20 page paper instead of explaining that's just bad etiquette.

It really just comes down to etiquette. Videos can often convey more information and do it in a shorter time span than an article. I'll sometimes link a 5 or maybe 10 minute video but I'll re-watch it to make sure it's relevant to our discussion.

When it comes to text I might recommend an article or book but I'll never just drop a title in response to an actual argument be like "yo read dis."

If someone phrases something really well or makes an argument really well - say, better than I could offhand - then I'm happy linking to a source or a video.

EDIT: Using sources can also be helpful to further clarify an idea.

This is a really good post and I'm not really in disagreement with any of it. I do think though that on a practical level just self-teaching oneself philosophy is really, really suspect. I've just seen too many of my co-workers (I work in a field completely unrelated to philosophy) just pick up Hegel or Metaphysics of Morals one day and try to break into the field that way and you and me both know what happens there.

Talking on forums like this is a nice start, but until you've had your work critiqued and evaluated by an expert in the field I really think it's tough. I have a BA in philosophy and for the first two years of it I felt like I was wandering around in the dark even with these PhDs guiding me. I get that some people catch on quicker, but I feel like until you're actually writing those papers and getting the feel for what they expect of you it's just completely different from self-study which is mostly just you in your own head or talking to random people who are probably in the same place as you. You need to familiarize yourself with the norms and expectations of the field. Good philosophy, at least in the analytic tradition, is often much more narrow and specified than most normal people outside the field would expect and this can come as kind of an unpleasant surprise to amateurs.

But back to the OP: Find a subject that your interested in, read relevant literature, talk to people, keep an open mind, leave your ego at the door and compare many perspectives. You can entertain an idea without accepting it. Also try to seek out someone with experience if possible.

As Camus famously put it: "“There is only one really serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy." the question of life's worth and suicide has been going around my mind for months now.
Do you think that life is worth living? And if so, what fuels that belief?
And what would your reaction be if on your commute you saw someone on the verge of taking their life by jumping off a bridge?

We can think about it from an individual or communal standpoint. I'm limiting my points to discussions about healthy people here and not those who are extremely sick.

From a communal standpoint it's extremely damaging. The family and community is affected for years. Again, I'm excluding cases where the person has a serious illness or disability. There was a spate of suicides among my classmates when I was in high school.

From an individual standpoint we know as a species that there's just so much to experience while you've living: namely, love. We could also include art, music, good food, etc. Intentionally dying is an explicit rejection of that. Nobody knows what happens when you die. It is a much, much more prudent decision to operate in a world of knowns with definite goals and things to aspire to than to intentionally throw that all away and dive into a complete unknown.

I don't think we're like this because we're a benevolent species, I think it's perhaps because people instinctively or subconsciously see merit in being seen as a caring, dependable team player. Or is it just because people who think collaboratively gravitate towards philosophy in the first place?

Personally, I don't engage in philosophy because I want to be seen as caring or a good team player. I think most of the more serious philosophers or students of philosophy engage for the exchange of ideas. If I'm talking to someone I'm probably probing them about something and I'm seeking a really well thought out defense of that idea that I'm probing about.

So, tl;dr... it's about improving my own understanding.

I'm not going to address your argument about anti-natalism because we haven't settled the more fundamental issue of you understanding NAP and NHP. These terms already have meanings and they are embedded within their own philosophical systems. These systems are important because they give us an idea of how to evaluate or critique an idea. I can't quite tell if you're just misunderstanding the ideas or if you're using your own private definitions. It's fine to use a personal definition with "autonomy" because that word can be a little vague and it's an easy semantical issue, but with NHP and NAP these terms have clear meanings which have already been established. If you don't agree with the idea just say you disagree with it and don't try to use the term in your own personal way and tell people that you agree with it because that would just be very confusing.

It would be like if I kept telling people that I believed in democracy and the democratic process but my own personal ideas of democracy were completely different than what the term is generally recognized as.

If a car was hanging off a precipice and about to fall on someone's head below the cliff, and a guy pushes the unknowing victims out of the way, he is not violating the NAP, as he is preventing known harm to occur, thus recognizing that person's autonomy which is about to be squashed.

The guy would be violating NAP by pushing the person out of the way. NAP is a deontological principle so it does not care about consequences. You are not allowed under NAP to use direct physical force on someone without their consent. Agree with it or not, that is what the NAP states.

It comes down to the standards of philosophy and good writing. Trust me, I wasted four years of my life on this and a pretty penny. A decent proportion of any philosophy paper will be allocated to just explaining the original author's ideas just to ensure that you understand it and to avoid the issue of using your own personal understanding of it.

Anyway, lets say I accept your own personal definition of the NHP here when we were talking about forcible vaccination.

Even if we were to allow the NAP to say that it is okay to not get vaccinated, the NHP would still be in force that we shouldn't allow for the conditions of others to be unnecessarily harmed if we can prevent it.

Your new understanding of the NHP has very authoritarian implications. If my fundamental principle is just preventing harm from befalling others then we're talking an extreme amount of paternalism and placing safety first and foremost. I don't want you to trip on the street maybe I should force you to wear kneepads and a helmut. I don't know what "unnecessary harm" is here and how it compares to "necessary harm" so I'm just trying to prevent harm.

I’m disappointed that nobody in this thread seems to know what anarchy actually is.

It’s not disorder or chaos or lawlessness. It is radically democratic, egalitarian, decentralized governance. It’s not the absence if governance, but the absence of a state, and the perfection of governance into a stateless form.

I'm actually interested in this. A couple questions though:

1. How would legislation work? Would everyone vote on every proposed law? Would it be majority rules?

2. How would law enforcement work? Would there be various bands of police in competition with each other?

There are things in anarchy which seem appealing to me and I'm not opposed to it on any base philosophical level I would just like a little more detail. I think we both agree that states can be extremely murderous.... Even if an anarchic society is a fundamentally just and fair one I question if it can conduct military affairs up to par with states.

First, I think you can make sharp distinctions between government and individual ethics.

Ok, so if my government pushes me to round up and execute Jews in ditches that's just a political thing and I have no moral culpability in that. Ok.

Second, how is it NOT aggressive to allow a deadly disease proliferate?

If you let a disease take its course that's not aggression. If I force you to do something like get a vaccination that would qualify as aggression. This distinction is important to liberal/libertarian thought.

Edit: OH Also, you COMPLETELY left out my other principle that of NON-HARM!!

...because we're focusing on the NAP? Honestly, I'm not here to beat you or destroy all of your arguments. Your tone suggests your getting defensive when the only reason I engaged you was to exchange ideas. I don't care who "wins" here. I don't care about winning internet arguments. For the record I find the non-harm principle much less problematic than NAP so.... one point for you?

Even if we were to allow the NAP to say that it is okay to not get vaccinated, the NHP would still be in force that we shouldn't allow for the conditions of others to be unnecessarily harmed if we can prevent it. That is my main point.

The NAP regards coercion as inherently bad. This isn't an "even if we were to allow" case; this is the primary idea of the NAP.

You're not understanding the NHP either. The NHP is concerned with constricting the actions of individuals to ones which don't harm others. It seeks to demarcate the proper limits of government. If we just take it to mean preventing harm in general from any source it takes on a very, very different meaning.

I don't mean to be mean here. I don't care about winning. I'm just trying to clarify.

So in what way would my version of the NAP not be applicable?

Lets take the case of an extremely contagious bio-chemical hazard or disease where we have the vaccination, but some people are refusing to be vaccinated for ideological reasons. It's a serious national security issue. And yes, we would be coercing these people if we made vaccination mandatory. If the choice is basically between mandatory vaccination or likely extinction which one do you choose?

There's no sharp distinction between the ethical and the political. Political decisions are made by people, by individuals. If I grab you and forcibly vaccinate you... I have coerced you and violated your autonomy even if I was acting as an agent of the state. I think national security is my biggest objection here.

Alright, so I'm someone who's also more libertarian in how I think and if you want to identity "autonomy" more with negative freedom that's fine with me. I also respect negative freedom and I think a lot of people recognize its importance.

What I can't do is jump from a general respect of negative freedom to embracing the non-aggression principle which categorically rejects any imposition of coercion. In other words, I can't jump from "I generally respect this principle" to "we need to abide by this principle in every possible circumstance."

I only mentioned having sex with... not being attracted to. Many gay men report having sex with women, do you think that doesn't make them gay? If a straight guy experiences same sex attraction for like a couple seconds does that make him bisexual?

Yes. You can't just say "use both" because in many situations they give opposite answers. And while I did define positive ethics as essentially utilitarianism, that's just a bad habit of mine. Positive ethics is anything telling you "you should do X"/"It would be wrong not to do X" instead of "you shouldn't do X"

Yes, thank you for the last definition. So much clearer.

Well, what does "reason" mean though? It is a tricky word and hence I avoid it.

This is Kant speaking, not me.

It all follows from the idea of not violating autonomy.

I feel like you're channeling Kant here, but Kant's idea of autonomy isn't a purely negative, libertarian idea of the subject. I don't think you can go from Kant's idea of autonomy directly to NAP (or at least I haven't seen it). It has been a while since I've picked up Kant, but I do remember that for Kant autonomy was intimately connected with rationality and to basically be bound by one's own laws. I believe he views rationality as a precondition for a free will.

I remember reading an article about a Korean guy in a gaming cafe who gamed for 72 hours and then dropped dead. Under the libertarian definition he had his freedom, but no way was this person driven by their rationality so I think Kant would say he was unfree. I'm happy to discuss this topic further.

Also any Kant experts here please let me know if I'm wrong.

I feel like we're just not agreeing on what "gay" means from LGBTQ. I'm from the US and in the US a gay man can still have sex with a woman and still be considered gay. It's just not as black-and-white as you take it to be, at least that's how we see things here. You treat it like it's an all or nothing thing.

You were totally right earlier on in your discussion with Gnonom where you said Darwin blurred the line between man and nature. Homosexuality activity is pervasive in nature and it's not uncommon to see same-sex pairings and I'm sure if we were able to follow matings habits out in the wild we'd see animals who appear to have a strong preference for same-sex mating based on their activity. It's the same for humans. That's all I'm talking -- a strong preference for same sex mating.