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Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Aardwolf on November 11, 2006, 01:32:25 pm

Title: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: Aardwolf on November 11, 2006, 01:32:25 pm
This is a serious topic, not one of my joke topics.

I begin by asking a series of questions, and answering some of them, either with questions or other answers. Most of the answers you'll just have to accept, some of them are debates in themselves, but that is not the point.

Q: What do I like / want?
A: Stuff.
Q: Why is that?
A: Because during the course of my life I have made associations between what I like now and being happy.
Q: And what caused you to make those associations?
A: For most of them, they actually make me happy, or I have reasoned that they would make me happy.
Q: What about doing things just for the satisfaction of doing them?
A: Satisfaction is a form of happiness. It's just an arbitrary distinction.
Q: Who made that distinction?
A: People did.
Q: And why did people make that distinction?
A: Because it is satisfying to do so. They like it. It made them happy.
Q: So why do you want to do things that would make me happy?
A: Because I like to be happy.
Q: But why do you like to be happy?
A: Because if I didn't like being happy, I would avoid being happy, and if I succeeded in avoiding being happy, I would have avoided what I didn't like, and then I would have gotten what I wanted, which is to be unhappy, and getting what I want makes me happy.
Q: How is being happy a good thing?
A: It feels good.
Q: So desiring happiness leads to happiness, but desiring unhappiness is paradoxical, because you are happy that you have made yourself unhappy, and unhappy that you have made yourself happy. What desire would lead to permanent unhappiness and dissatisfcation then?
A: Idunno, maybe wanting to be sort of happy.
Q: Are you sure?
A: Well, if I want to be sort of happy, and I become sort of happy, then I am happy, but then I am unhappy because I am not precisely sort-of-happy. On the average, I become sort of happy, though, which makes me happy. So I suppose as time passed on it would either continue alternating or would approach happiness.
Q: So no desire being fulfilled will lead to definite (non-paradoxical) unhappiness. Are you saying that desires are associated with happiness and satisfaction?
A: Well, duh.
Q: Okay, that's a fair statement. What if we had no desires, then?
A: Well, I suppose if you don't want to have or not have anything, nothing will make you happy or unhappy.
Q: What about some outside influence making you happy?
A: Well, then we're talking about something like physical pleasure.
Q: But what if you desire not to have physical pleasure? Like if you're a monk or something?
A: If that's the case, you have a desire, a desire to avoid physical pleasure, and by doing so you are satisfying that desire, which is a good feeling.
Q: And is a "good feeling" "pleasurable?"
A: I guess.
Q: Then what if you have no sense of pleasure or displeasure? Would you still have desires?
A: I doubt it. I mean, there would be no motive.
Q: Would anything ever get done?
A: Not intelligently, no. I mean, you wouldn't even want to experiment to figure out what you are capable of doing. Sure, actions could be done on you, and you would be affected by them, but effectively you'd be a rock.
Q: So then, in individuals, there is a self perpetuating cycle?
A: Sure, that makes sense.
Q: But where does it start?
A: Well, if you buy into the creationist theory, then the first man had desires of some sort.
Q: And how did it get passed on?
A: Well, he obviously had the desire to reproduce, because he did so.
Q: And where did that desrie come from?
A: He must have been created with it?
Q: Okay, what if I don't buy into the creation theory? What does "evolution" say?
A: Then it started by some random fluke. I guess it is also possible that it was started by some outside intervention, but after that, the laws of nature were in charge.
Q: But what could be pleasurable to a molecule of DNA?
A: Nothing, it doesn't have a sense of pleasure.
Q: Then how can evolution work?
A: Well, it seems more like it would have been a combination of many smaller flukes, each individually of medium-low probability, but being possible in many many places for a long time. Eventually, it was bound to happen.
Q: What if it didn't happen?
A: Then we wouldn't be here.
Q: But don't you like being here?
A: Well, I do, but if I didn't exist there would never have been a me to complain. Come to think of it, if life had never formed, there wouldn't be any happiness or unhappiness, pleasure or displeasure, satisfaction or dissatisfaction, as a result of that lack of an event.
Q: So what's the point of doing what makes us happy if in the future if we don't do what makes us happy (following the instinct to perpetuate the species, in particular) nobody will be around to care?
A: Well, it makes us happy now, and it will make future generations happy.
Q: But if they aren't born, they won't mind not being happy, because they don't exist, and it's not like they're unhappy either. So how does it matter?
A: I suppose it doesn't, but I'm going to do it anyway.
Q: Why's that?
A: Because it's easier and more fun.
Q: And why do you want to do something that's easier or more fun?
A: Because that is the way my species is.
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: aldo_14 on November 11, 2006, 01:35:48 pm
Are you Eliza?
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: Aardwolf on November 11, 2006, 01:40:04 pm
Who? Eliza, the computer program?
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: aldo_14 on November 11, 2006, 01:48:00 pm
Why do you mention computers?
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: Ghostavo on November 11, 2006, 02:01:45 pm
 :lol:
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: Aardwolf on November 11, 2006, 02:02:54 pm
Well who is Eliza, then?
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: Shadow0000 on November 11, 2006, 02:03:37 pm
Eliza is not ELIZA.
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: Aardwolf on November 11, 2006, 02:26:00 pm
Can someone please at least acknowledge that there is a paradox here?
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: ZylonBane on November 11, 2006, 02:28:39 pm
The paradox of someone purporting to be smart not getting an Eliza joke?
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: spartan_0214 on November 11, 2006, 02:38:39 pm
so the ultimate question remains:

If ther is no happiness, would anything get done, or if there was only unhappiness, would anything get done?
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: kode on November 11, 2006, 03:39:16 pm
so the ultimate question remains:

If ther is no happiness, would anything get done, or if there was only unhappiness, would anything get done?

one needs not happiness, only the illusion of it.
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: spartan_0214 on November 11, 2006, 03:42:29 pm
scary...
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: kode on November 11, 2006, 04:43:49 pm
yeah.
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: Mathwiz6 on November 11, 2006, 05:07:56 pm
"The only thing that it does not matter if it is an illusion is consciousness"
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: aldo_14 on November 11, 2006, 06:20:34 pm
Can someone please at least acknowledge that there is a paradox here?

Please go on.
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: BlackDove on November 11, 2006, 06:56:22 pm
Snooze fest.
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: NGTM-1R on November 11, 2006, 10:47:45 pm
Can someone please at least acknowledge that there is a paradox here?

No.
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: Unknown Target on November 11, 2006, 10:50:01 pm
Yes.

Ha! I have created a paradox! You will never get me to agree with ngtm1r, and him with me. Therefore, who is right? There is a paradox of morals and decisions - if there is no right and wrong, then what must we judge our actions by? If we always strive to do the right or wrong thing, how do we know it's right or wrong?
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: NGTM-1R on November 11, 2006, 10:52:31 pm
However, by not specifying what you were agreeing to intially, you have created the impression you were agreeing with me, thereby creating a totally different paradox from the one you desired to create.

HAHA!
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: Bobboau on November 12, 2006, 01:04:03 am
you know you could have just said "your right"
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: kode on November 12, 2006, 04:07:17 am
you know you could have just said "your right"

what about his right?
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: Ford Prefect on November 12, 2006, 06:00:32 am
(http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b319/Mistah_Kurtz/camus_wtf.jpg)
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: Fergus on November 12, 2006, 12:55:01 pm
Something must obviously matter enough for you to take the time to type something that long.  And frankly stuff should not be no. 1 on the list of what you want.
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: Mathwiz6 on November 12, 2006, 01:27:00 pm
Why must it matter?
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: WMCoolmon on November 12, 2006, 02:30:50 pm
What the hell is going on here?  :wtf:
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: redsniper on November 12, 2006, 04:50:53 pm
Deep philosophical discussions on the nature of mankind and maybe even the universe itself. It's becoming so paradoxical that any further discussion may cause the universe to both explode and implode simultaneously.
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: kode on November 12, 2006, 04:52:37 pm
What the hell is going on here?  :wtf:

someone unlocked the cages. now all that's left is the snails.
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: BlackDove on November 12, 2006, 04:54:24 pm
Honk, honk. I'm a clown.
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: NGTM-1R on November 13, 2006, 12:36:21 am
Honk, honk. I'm a clown.

Much is explained.
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: kode on November 13, 2006, 12:41:27 am
Honk, honk. I'm a clown.

Much is explained.

won't someone PLEASE think of the children?
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: Ford Prefect on November 13, 2006, 01:08:00 am
Children have no place in the vast series of tubes.
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: aldo_14 on November 13, 2006, 04:43:38 am
Children have no place in the vast series of tubes.

Yes they do; who else could fit in to clean them?  Midgets?  Have you seen how much they cost?!
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: Colonol Dekker on November 13, 2006, 05:05:16 am
Happyness is an absence of comprehension, IE Ignorance is bliss,

^J Dobbs 2006


Also pity is just feeling sorry for someone elses mistake.
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: Mathwiz6 on November 13, 2006, 07:22:42 am
Therefore, school is evil, as they are making us learn.

Or are they? I may forgive them if so...

Forced labor still does 'em in  :D

Child labor.
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: Colonol Dekker on November 13, 2006, 07:23:41 am
If knowledge is power, does that make genius' unhappy by contrast? :confused:

Ner Ner @ conflicting views.
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: NGTM-1R on November 13, 2006, 07:27:15 am
You've been dekkered again, Dekker.

Appropriate.
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: Colonol Dekker on November 13, 2006, 07:28:19 am
No i haven't..... so  :P
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: NGTM-1R on November 13, 2006, 08:13:29 am
Curse you ninja edit! CURSE YOU~!
Title: Re: The Unwinnable Undiscussed Argument of Morals is: Does Anything Matter?
Post by: Colonol Dekker on November 13, 2006, 08:15:15 am
It's an illusion.....

Was it morally right that i changed that to save embarrasment? you deicde.....