cnn: Teacher who was fired after fertility treatments sues diocese

[PeterMP]

If you do not mind I will switch to single-post answers because they may be easier to track.

1) Risks of making decisions (a.k.a. what if we isolate psychopaths, but there is actually value in setting them set free?) - all decisions are associated with risks and benefits. If you would like to present a case for setting violent psychopaths free, be my guest.

Have you watched your own video?

She alludes to it in terms of a single study, but I'd suggest she needs to talk to some anthropologist. I don't think there is much doubt that violence and cooperation are evolutionarily two different sides of the same coin.

That is that violence drives coopertivity. We even have a saying related to it, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

If you didn't have violence, you'd eliminate a major driving force for the selection of coopertivity.

I don't think there is any doubt that human violence is tuned by evolution and that coopertivity is a product of violence (I'm not going to claim that violence is "well tuned" in modern society, but on evolutionary time scales there is an inter-realtion. Current human evolution is pretty messy. You still have ancient selection based on the ability to support children and leave them as reproductive off spring co-mixing with first world evolution, which is largely dictated simply by who is willing to have kids)

(Interestingly, she also talks about the ease in which it is to incite out group violence. You can essentially have one person drive large scale violence, and so large scale cooperation amongst groups that otherwise wouldn't cooperate, and then after that one person is removed the people that are left aren't any more prone to violent behavior than the rest of the population. And this clearly would have different evolutionarily affects than your average street gang runnig up agaisnt a neighboring average street gang.)

2) On sufficiency of a system to discuss and discard bad ideas and your request to define "bad" - bad ideas are those which will be discarded. This is why we need the discussion. Unfortunately we are often requested to respect religious positions without proper scrutiny.

So the system is going to discard bad ideas and bad ideas are going to be bad because they are discarded. Practice circular logic much?

There is never going to be a system where information is equally shared.

3) About a possibility of an organized and robust yet non-dogmatic, non-objective, and non-authoritative system to protect society from violent psychopaths - violent psychopathy can be detected during brain imaging. One possible approach could involve brain imaging to determine whether an individual poses a danger. You can obviously claim any system that uses authority to be authoritative. This is not the way in which I used the term.

I think most people would call a system that scans people's brains and then locks them up based on the result an authoritative system.

4) About whether or not we are perfectly evolved - another vague language problem here. What does it mean to be perfectly evolved? We have evolved the capacity for cooperation and a capacity for violence. Deriving moral codes from our knowledge of our constitution will help us reinforce one and reduce the other.

For example, you mentioned out-group conflict. We know those dynamics well. We as a society can make it immoral to drum up in-group out-group differences.

On what basis? Out group conflict has likely been a vital an important part of human evolution.

Who has decided now that out group conflict is "bad" and should be immoral and why?

What affects are you going to have on future evoltion?

Do you really believe that you could eliminate violence w/o affecting cooperation on evolutionary time scales?

[alexey]

Have you watched your own video?

She alludes to it in terms of a single study, but I'd suggest she needs to talk to some anthropologist. I don't think there is much doubt that violence and cooperation are evolutionarily two different sides of the same coin.

That is that violence drives coopertivity. We even have a saying related to it, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

If you didn't have violence, you'd eliminate a major driving force for the selection of coopertivity.

I don't think there is any doubt that human violence is tuned by evolution and that coopertivity is a product of violence (I'm not going to claim that violence is "well tuned" in modern society, but on evolutionary time scales there is an inter-realtion. Current human evolution is pretty messy. You still have ancient selection based on the ability to support children and leave them as reproductive off spring co-mixing with first world evolution, which is largely dictated simply by who is willing to have kids)

Interestingly, she also talks about the ease in which it is to incite out group violence. You can essentially have one person drive large scale violence, and so large scale cooperation amongst groups that otherwise wouldn't cooperate, and then after that one person is removed the people that are left aren't any more prone to violent behavior than the rest of the population.)

I would generally take position that cooperation is possible without violence, but I am not sure how this relates to the topic of our conversation. I would appreciate you helping to drive it home for me.

So the system is going to discard bad ideas and bad ideas are going to be bad because they are discarded. Practice circular logic much?

There is never going to be a system where information is equally shared.

Bad ideas can take many different shapes. There is one thing all bad ideas reliably have in common - they will all be eventually discarded.

Bad ideas can stick around longer if they are not discussed. I think it is a problem when we automatically grant respect to things that people take on faith.

I think most people would call a system that scans people's brains and then locks them up based on the result an authoritative system.

Some people don't think we should keep databases of fingerprints as well... but they do help us catch criminals and save lives. These are difficult questions.

On what basis? Out group conflict has likely been a vital an important part of human evolution.

Who has decided now that out group conflict is "bad" and should be immoral and why?

What affects are you going to have on future evoltion?

Do you really believe that you could eliminate violence w/o affecting cooperation?

My starting point is that we are all humans, we all understand what suffering is like and what happiness is like, we can understand each other, and should work together.

Your starting point is your personal God who you say has the authority to tell other people how they ought to act.

---------- Post added April-30th-2012 at 09:18 PM ----------

I am going to take it one step further and ask you to produce any evidence that humans can become violent even if they grow up in a peaceful setting where food is plentiful.

[PeterMP]

I would generally take position that cooperation is possible without violence, but I am not sure how this relates to the topic of our conversation. I would appreciate you helping to drive it home for me.

Because you seem to believe that you can regulate away behavior w/o having long term consequences based on some definition of good.

That you can measure good and bad and that they aren't inter-related on evolutionary time scale.

That violence is part of coopertivity.

Bad ideas can take many different shapes. There is one thing all bad ideas reliably have in common - they will all be eventually discarded.

Bad ideas can stick around longer if they are not discussed. I think it is a problem when we automatically grant respect to things that people take on faith.

Aren't you taking it on faith that it is actually possible to create a system that actually can determine if in the long term that ideas are bad?

That any system that we design to discard ideas long term won't essentially be random processing of said ideas?

Again, your ideas are starting to sound a lot like social darwinism, which most serious people that study evolution have rejected.

My starting point is that we are all humans, we all understand what suffering is like and what happiness is like, we can understand each other, and should work together.

Your starting point is your personal God who you say has the authority to tell other people how they ought to act.

I am going to take it one step further and ask you to produce any evidence that humans can become violent even if they grow up in a peaceful setting where food is plentiful.

Are you serious?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyle_and_Erik_Menendez

http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/002792.html

[alexey]

Because you seem to believe that you can regulate away behavior w/o having long term consequences based on some definition of good.

That you can measure good and bad and that they aren't inter-related on evolutionary time scale.

That violence is part of coopertivity.

Aren't you taking it on faith that it is actually possible to create a system that actually can determine if in the long term that ideas are bad?

That any system that we design to discard ideas long term won't essentially be random processing of said ideas?

Again, your ideas are starting to sound a lot like social darwinism, which most serious people that study evolution have rejected.

Are you serious?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyle_and_Erik_Menendez

http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/002792.html

I think that I have repeatedly and clearly stated my position. You ought to do the same before we proceed.

[PeterMP]

I think that I have repeatedly and clearly stated my position. You ought to do the same before we proceed.

I thought I'd clearly stated my position. My position is that if you start with the assumption that humans are similar to all other organisms and our being and socities are a product of evolution and natural selection, there is no reason to believe that we are capable of building "good" socities based on any reasonable metric other than this is what we want essentially right now and even that has limits because what I want right now is based on where I am, which will be based on prior actions that will be beyond are control.

There is every reason to believe that really understanding large complex systems, such as human socities and evolution, is well beyond the scope of our abilities in terms of being able to engineer or direct them in any sort of meaningful manner.

That your position is very closely tied to social darwinism, which most people that think seriously about evolution never accepted and has certainly been rejected by the vast majority of people that have thought about it.

That while we might think we can reason through such things there will be large and monstrous unintended consequences and long term (on societal and human evolutionary time scales) won't be much different than randomly selecting actions over the whole society and longer time scales.

That evolution is an on going process and at any point in time, there is no reason to believe that the product is "good" or even really "fit". And that making the assumption that evolution has given us the ability to reason that is "good" or "fit" enough to carefully consider larger societal issues and make "good" decisions (or come up with metrics to measure "good" and "bad" decisions that actually have any meaning) given conditions that are constantly changing is a huge assumption and realistically faith.

And it certainly isn't supported by our understanding of evolution, or what we know about the abilities of humans to actually understand complex systems.

[alexey]

I thought I'd clearly stated my position. My position is that if you start with the assumption that humans are similar to all other organisms and our being and socities are a product of evolution and natural selection, there is no reason to believe that we are capable of building "good" socities based on any reasonable metric other than this is what we want essentially right now and even that has limits because what I want right now is based on where I am, which will be based on prior actions that will be beyond are control.

There is every reason to believe that really understanding large complex systems, such as human socities and evolution, is well beyond the scope of our abilities in terms of being able to engineer or direct them in any sort of meaningful manner.

That your position is very closely tied to social darwinism, which most people that think seriously about evolution never accepted and has certainly been rejected by the vast majority of people that have thought about it.

That while we might think we can reason through such things there will be large and monstrous unintended consequences and long term (on societal and human evolutionary time scales) won't be much different than randomly selecting actions over the whole society and longer time scales.

That evolution is an on going process and at any point in time, there is no reason to believe that the product is "good" or even really "fit". And that making the assumption that evolution has given us the ability to reason that is "good" or "fit" enough to carefully consider larger societal issues and make "good" decisions (or come up with metrics to measure "good" and "bad" decisions that actually have any meaning) given conditions that are constantly changing is a huge assumption and realistically faith.

And it certainly isn't supported by our understanding of evolution, or what we know about the abilities of humans to actually understand complex systems.

This is your view of my position. Do you have a position that is not defined in relation to mine?

While you are criticizing a position that I did not outline, fundamental problems highlighted by your criticism are common to all approaches. What do you have to offer? Objective morality grounded in ancient culture-specific scriptures, in your subjective understanding of God? Are you going to humor me with claims of objective morality that is grounded in your own personal God?

If I do not believe in God, or if I believe in a different God, your objective morality becomes even more subjective/relative than it would be otherwise. I could even believe in the same God and disagree with your interpretation. You are offering the same subjectivity, but with claims of a divine mandate. That makes it more dangerous.

[Prosperity]

This is your view of my position. Do you have a position that is not defined in relation to mine?

While you are criticizing a position that I did not outline, fundamental problems highlighted by your criticism are common to all approaches. What do you have to offer? Objective morality grounded in ancient culture-specific scriptures, in your subjective understanding of God? Are you going to humor me with claims of objective morality that is grounded in your own personal God?

If I do not believe in God, or if I believe in a different God, your objective morality becomes even more subjective/relative than it would be otherwise. I could even believe in the same God and disagree with your interpretation. You are offering the same subjectivity, but with claims of a divine mandate. That makes it more dangerous.

He has already demonstrated that your purported source of ethics is circular. So much for your reason. Say what you want about ethics that stem from belief in God, but at least such ethics are based in an ideal, that is something beyond ourselves that must strive toward. That gets to the core of ethics. Ethics concerns notions of "ought"/"should" that means there are better ways, that means there are ideals, states that we reach for and in the process better ourselves.

But we can also use science. Religions help produce good citizens. But that's not just anecdotal evidence, but can be demonstrated through evidence.

Forty percent of worship-attending Americans volunteer regularly to help the poor and elderly, compared with 15% of Americans who never attend services. Frequent-attenders are also more likely than the never-attenders to volunteer for school and youth programs (36% vs. 15%), a neighborhood or civic group (26% vs. 13%), and for health care (21% vs. 13%). The same is true for philanthropic giving; religious Americans give more money to secular causes than do secular Americans. And the list goes on, as it is true for good deeds such as helping someone find a job, donating blood, and spending time with someone who is feeling blue.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyyoung/100063761/dawkins-and-hitchens-are-wrong-religious-people-are-actually-much-nicer-than-athiests-according-to-magisterial-five-year-study/

[PeterMP]

This is your view of my position. Do you have a position that is not defined in relation to mine?

While you are criticizing a position that I did not outline, fundamental problems highlighted by your criticism are common to all approaches. What do you have to offer? Objective morality grounded in ancient culture-specific scriptures, in your subjective understanding of God? Are you going to humor me with claims of objective morality that is grounded in your own personal God?

If I do not believe in God, or if I believe in a different God, your objective morality becomes even more subjective/relative than it would be otherwise. I could even believe in the same God and disagree with your interpretation. You are offering the same subjectivity, but with claims of a divine mandate. That makes it more dangerous.

I've never claimed to have an answer, espeically not an answer that would satisfy anybody else.

I think it is very important to separate what one knows, from what one thinks (what I can support with things that I know), from what one believes.

I can't give you my beliefs, and realistically, I'm not going to try (especially over the internet).

That doesn't mean I can't state your beliefs are beliefs and have no real support in science or based on reason as you seem to suggest every time this topic comes up.

[alexey]

He has already demonstrated that your purported source of ethics is circular. So much for your reason. Say what you want about ethics that stem from belief in God, but at least such ethics are based in an ideal, that is something beyond ourselves that must strive toward. That gets to the core of ethics. Ethics concerns notions of "ought"/"should" that means there are better ways, that means there are ideals, states that we reach for and in the process better ourselves.

You do not need to make stuff up and take things on faith in order to have ideals beyond yourself to strive toward.

You do not need a God to tell you right from wrong. You already know right from wrong. Even your religion tells you that. Think of what you want about the source of that knowledge, but we do agree that you already have it.

But we can also use science. Religions help produce good citizens. But that's not just anecdotal evidence, but can be demonstrated through evidence.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyyoung/100063761/dawkins-and-hitchens-are-wrong-religious-people-are-actually-much-nicer-than-athiests-according-to-magisterial-five-year-study/

Religions help produce a lot of different things.

[Prosperity]

You do not need to make stuff up and take things on faith in order to have ideals beyond yourself to strive toward.

You do not need a God to tell you right from wrong. You already know right from wrong. Even your religion tells you that. Think of what you want about the source of that knowledge, but we do agree that you already have it.

Faith is the foundation of all reasoning. I already explained that to you. You can not reason with out underlying assumptions or axioms. I recommend you read David Hume's Enquiry into Human Understanding in order to see the extent of reason absent faith.

[alexey]

I've never claimed to have an answer, espeically not an answer that would satisfy anybody else.

I think it is very important to separate what one knows, from what one thinks (what I can support with things that I know), from what one believes.

I can't give you my beliefs, and realistically, I'm not going to try (especially over the internet).

That doesn't mean I can't state your beliefs are beliefs and have no real support in science or based on reason as you seem to suggest every time this topic comes up.

Perhaps I failed to properly communicate my approach, or maybe I failed to leave space for concepts that you want to keep. In either case I reassure you that you do not display an understanding of what I am proposing.

All approaches to morality/ethics will have problems because we cannot refer these questions to an authority.

You keep pointing at this fundamental issue as if it is somehow unique in my approach and can be avoided in others. This is not the case.

[alexey]

Faith is the foundation of all reasoning. I already explained that to you. You can not reason with out underlying assumptions or axioms. I recommend you read David Hume's Enquiry into Human Understanding in order to see the extent of reason absent faith.

You are playing language games with the word "faith".

Faith in gravity is different from faith in Santa.

[PeterMP]

Perhaps I failed to properly communicate my approach, or maybe I failed to leave space for concepts that you want to keep. In either case I reassure you that you do not display an understanding of what I am proposing.

All approaches to morality/ethics will have problems because we cannot refer these questions to an authority.

You keep pointing at this fundamental issue as if it is somehow unique in my approach and can be avoided in others. This is not the case.

What am I not understanding?

Your system has a flaw that other systems don't have. Your system has a flaw in that you can't even start to define what is good and what is bad.

I'll ask again, why is out group violence bad? Why are psycopaths that kill people bad?

The psycophat doesn't think he's "bad". People participating in out group violence don't think they are bad. Why is your evolutionary system that says they are bad "better" then theirs? How much of your evolutionary system for determining bad dependent on people commiting out group violence? Is out group violence still bad if the only way you know it is bad because people have done it in the past (and people in the future will know it is bad if it keeps being done)?

More importantly, why must we choose a system?

Why can't we be agnostic about a morality system?

[Prosperity]

You are playing language games with the word "faith".

Faith in gravity is different from faith in Santa.

Yes and knowing that I exist, and knowing that you exist are different. Doesn't change the point. You can't apply reason to the world without faith in something. I'm glad you have stopped pretending that is the case.

[alexey]

Yes and knowing that I exist, and knowing that you exist are different. Doesn't change the point. You can't apply reason to the world without faith in something. I'm glad you have stopped pretending that is the case.

I cannot apply reason to the world without using some kind of something that somebody on some forum can call "faith". You are right about that.

[alexey]

What am I not understanding?

Your system has a flaw that other systems don't have. Your system has a flaw in that you can't even start to define what is good and what is bad.

I'll ask again, why is out group violence bad? Why are psycopaths that kill people bad?

The psycophat doesn't think he's "bad". People participating in out group violence don't think they are bad. Why is your evolutionary system that says they are bad "better" then theirs? How much of your evolutionary system for determining bad dependent on people commiting out group violence? Is out group violence still bad if the only way you know it is bad because people have done it in the past (and people in the future will know it is bad if it keeps being done)?

More importantly, why must we choose a system?

Why can't we be agnostic about a morality system?

We can be agnostic in theory, but in reality we have to make decisions about our behavior every day.

Please give me an example of a system which can start to define what is good and what is bad.

[Prosperity]

I cannot apply reason to the world without using some kind of something that somebody on some forum can call "faith". You are right about that.

If you want to play semantics then define your terms

[PeterMP]

We can be agnostic in theory, but in reality we have to make decisions about our behavior every day.

Please give me an example of a system which can start to define what is good and what is bad.

Why?

And why do we have to make decisions in terms of morality?

Why can't we simply recognize our decisions are based on the result of complex set of reactions and interactions in an electrochemical system that do not have to have a morality associated with them?

Any system that defines good and bad not in terms of long term societal and human out comes has an advantage over your system.

[LadySkinsFan]

Why can't people keep out of other people's business and live and let live?

I mean, really.

[alexey]

If you want to play semantics then define your terms

I do not want to play semantics. I am not the one trying to stretch the meaning of a word to make a point.

I think that the difference between a faith-based approach and an evidence-based approach is quite obvious.

[alexey]

Why?

And why do we have to make decisions in terms of morality?

Why can't we simply recognize our decisions are based on the result of complex set of reactions and interactions in an electrochemical system that do not have to have a morality associated with them?

Any system that defines good and bad not in terms of long term societal and human out comes has an advantage over your system.

If you have good ideas, they will be incorporated into my system. God is not one of those good ideas.

You do not have to call it morality. You can call it "a way to figure out the proper mindsets, actions, and other such important things".

[PeterMP]

If you have good ideas, they will be incorporated into my system. God is not one of those good ideas.

You do not have to call it morality. You can call it "a way to figure out the proper mindsets, actions, and other such important things".

What makes a mind set proper?

Or an action?

Why isn't God a good idea?

[alexey]

What makes a mind set proper?

Or an action?

Why isn't God a good idea?

These are great questions which we as a society should be willing to discuss. God is not a good idea because he makes this kind of a discussion difficult to have.

[PeterMP]

These are great questions which we as a society should be willing to discuss. God is not a good idea because he makes this kind of a discussion difficult to have.

But you have to have a basis to discuss them.

Without God (or some other sort of big assumption), you don't even have a place to start. Don't you realize that?

You can't even put forward an intelligent argument why psycopaths that kill people are bad w/o starting with an assumption that has no more meaning than starting with God.

Why is the assumption of God making the discussions less difficult than the assumptions you want to start with?

**EDIT**

Let's have a discussion about why Hitler was bad w/o making any major assumptions. I've got nothing. Your turn.

[alexey]

But you have to have a basis to discuss them.

Without God (or some other sort of big assumption), you don't even have a place to start. Don't you realize that?

You can't even put forward an intelligent argument why psycopaths that kill people are bad w/o starting with an assumption that has no more meaning than starting with God.

Why is the assumption of God making the discussions less difficult than the assumptions you want to start with?

**EDIT**

Let's have a discussion about why Hitler was bad w/o making any major assumptions. I've got nothing. Your turn.

Ok. I will even use good/bad value judgement language that you seem to insist on. Do note that we probably mean slightly different things by these terms.

I think it is bad to execute people without due process. Are you with me so far?