Best Assassin Guide?

Horatia - Dreamweaver

ArchSeraph - Dreamweaver wrote: »

So what you've said, in so many words, is you utilize certain moral views when they fit your needs. Cool story, bro. May as well change religions based on which ones are better tools for you in the moment.

Actually, I'm agnostic, so there is no need to change anything about my religious views. Perhaps my being agnostic is the reason I find nothing wrong with using what works in the moment. However, do you necessarily agree with everything you use? I know that many of my coworkers do not like the contract we have, but when management tries to implement something which goes against the contract, they will use the contract to fight it. I know that many people do not necessarily like String Theory, but they will use it when it works to prove what they say. I know many people dislike traffic laws, but won't hesitate to use them to their advantage.

If you think that the entire world sticks to a single point of view, I am sorry to say, but you are as foolish as those who would only ever use a single idea. Ask anyone who studies philosophy, all of them will tell you that every single theory in it is flawed. Utilitarianism, Absolutism, Relativism, Nihilism, etc., all work only in situations they are meant for, but all will find flaws. Utilitarianism works until you start wondering if the torture of one person for the entertainment of thousands is moral. Absolutism works until you come to ask if killing a crying baby to prevent a group from being found and murdered is moral. Relativism works until different cultures have different morals on the same subject. Nihilism breaks down because based on it, nothing is moral.

If you want to stick to a single idea, by all means do. However, don't try to say that when it doesn't work, it is still right. It's far better though to use several different ideas rather than a single one. When was the last time you ever saw a person use only one citation to explain an entire subject?

_Leif - Lost City

I still don't understand the point of this thread >.>

Nice essay tho^

Horatia - Dreamweaver

_Leif - Lost City wrote: »

I still don't understand the point of this thread >.>

Nice essay tho^

Well, I've already established that all of these threads serve mostly the purpose of satisfying my own curiosity. Other than that, I don't feel there is any more need to elaborate, except to say that should there be enough votes in the results to show a significant favoring, it may help other people who look.

Also, thank you for the compliment.

skyxiii

Sorry about that. Post didn't come through. I'll try again. Hope it comes through this time >.<. These forums don't like my copying/pasting so I have to retype my entire response ('.__.)

Horatia - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Now, if you honestly do wish to not discuss this anymore, I'll respect that, but I do hope you will continue to discuss this, if for nothing else, the sake of finding a common logic we can both agree on and be content with. Such is, after all, the point of these forums, to find common ground on which we all agree is right. Until such time, we must discuss all subjects.

As you wish.

Horatia - Dreamweaver wrote: »

As you should have guessed, I use the tools at my disposal. However, it does not necessarily mean I completely believe in them. Personally, I favor St. Thomas Aquinas over Jeremy Benthem, but why use a screwdriver when a powerdrill is better fitting for the work at hand? I do not believe in utilitarianism, but in some places it works while in others it does not.

I believe that your analogy lacks depth of comparison. We're talking about ideologies here, not hardware tools.
It's like asking why not use biological weapons to infect all our enemies in war with contagious diseases instead of bullets?
Bottom line here is if someone argues with something, using its value and worth to compliment their points, that they don't believe in then the result is an argument that lacks substance.
I personally don't want to argue with someone who is arguing with something they don't believe in.

Horatia - Dreamweaver wrote: »

For example, the "slaughter" of animals to feed humans is actually nature done in a more advanced and efficient way.

First off, you need to understand that I brought up this in response to utilitarianism. You are wrong when you say my "argument" holds no place in this subject because I wasn't trying to make an argument, but rather a stance against the ideology. But you just stated that you don't believe in said ideology,
If you're going to use only parts of utilitarianism to argue your points, and if you don't believe in utilitarianism in its entirety, - then it is not utilitarianism. You came at me earlier with the entire solid block of utilitarianism and even asked me to argue by its bounds. Absolutely no where in your post did you give even a single impression that you didn't believe in said ideology. But you just stated plainly that you don't believe in utilitarianism, so why are you arguing for it now? Despite this contradiction, I'll still counter.

Horatia - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Humans are naturally omnivores (hence the reason we have both canines and molars), so animals are a part of our natural diet. We can choose to not eat them, as many do, but you cannot deny that we were biologically designed to.

Yes, I can and will directly deny that we were biologically designed to eat meat - if by "biologically designed" you mean what nature intended for us originally disregarding evolution. This is exactly contrary to what we were taught in ESS 104 - Prehistoric Life so I will make a direct refutation.

The evidence you present for humans eating meat is that we have canines. Our "canine" teeth are just that, a name. True canine teeth are much longer and sharper. In fact, other vegetarian animals, like horses, also have these pseudo-canine teeth.
Additionally, do a little research about chimpanzee teeth. They have true canine teeth, yet they remain largely (probably more than 95%) vegetarian.
If we simply define omnivorism as having the capability of eating both animals and plants, then sure, humans are omnivores. But you specifically stated that "we were biologically designed" that way.
Scientific evidence support that our ancestors almost exclusively ate plants, and therefore eating meat would not be something we were "designed" to do, but rather a choice that our kind has made.
I will finish by also presenting anatomical evidence. Human physiology shares an incredible amount of similarities with herbivore physiology. Our teeth, saliva, and intestines are dissimilar to true omnivores or carnivores.
Teeth - Like herbivores, we don't have extremely sharp/pointed front teeth used to tear flesh.
Saliva - Like herbivores, our saliva isn't acidic and contains an enzyme that helps us digest grains.
Intestines - Like herbivores, our stomach acid isn't strong like that of those who need to digest tough animal muscle and bone. Moreover, like herbivores, our intestines are much longer than that of carnivores.

Do you really think it's a coincidence that the peoples of the world who practice diets that emphasize meat consumption have the shortest life spans? Solid scientific and statistical fact support that the more meat we eat, the more disease we suffer and the sicker we get. This has been proven to be the case time and time again, over and over. There is absolutely no way you can deny this correlation.

Horatia - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Therefore, unless you plan to turn lions, sharks, wolves, and dolphins into vegans, your argument holds no place in this subject. Now lets assume you just mean that we have a choice where they do not. You still need to figure out how many humans would die as well, and how many species would overpopulate due to the lack of a major predator in the food chain. Add it all up, you will still find that us remaining in the food chain provides more benefits to the ecosystem as a whole.

Like you said, the carnivores you mentioned do not have a choice, whereas Homo sapiens, being the most advanced species on the planet, can make conscious decisions and judgment calls about morality.
By no means can you justify humans slaughtering animals through the arguments of benefiting the food-chain/ecosystem and overpopulation.
Doing so is quite obviously, in my opinion, a symptom of cognitive dissonance.
So let me as you something Horatia - If a technologically advanced aliens decided to land on Earth and started cutting us up with their laser weapons and putting your mother's, sister's, father's, and friend's severed limbs/extremities up for sale in stores for purchase and consumption - and they justified this by saying "Oh we're helping Earth's ecosystem by keeping human population down" - would you accept it? I know I, for one, would be against it.

Horatia - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Slavery though cannot be justified. You first have to figure how much one person can do to please how many others, and what the value of their pleasure is to that one person's suffering, which is impossible, as first it would depend on the owner. Second, if the slave did not want to do it, he would have to be punished, as in beaten, tortured, or some other manner of discipline, most likely something with pain. If the owner did not do this, nothing would stop the slave from leaving, hence not making him a slave, but an employee. If he were killed, you would still have to calculate how much good could have come, which is immeasurable, hence killing cannot be justified. Slavery itself would be a vicious circle of what can or cannot happen, and it boils down to that a person cannot be owned, because if they choose to not work at all, nothing can come as a benefit as punishment won't work, and they would therefore have to be freed.

Regardless, if you take a utilitarian standpoint, slavery can be justified in the physical sense. Gauging emotions like pleasure and suffering, as you mentioned, impossible and therefore attempts would be nonsensical - so let us work with extremes. If you took a small country and all its people and passed them out, one slave per family, to a larger country ~ you would be looking at 1 slave's suffering versus, on average, three or more family members benefiting. Utilitarianism can be used to argue for slavery because of the very fact that we can't measure emotions, so we are forced to say that the maximum capacity for a slave's suffering can only be tantamount to and never exceed the max capacity of one family member's pleasure - but since we have many more family members than we do slaves, utilitarians can say that those benefiting outnumber those suffering.
In conclusion, utilitarianism just doesn't work for me, so of course if you use the ideology to argue your points and ask me to argue under it, I'm going to refuse.

Finally - I'm not arguing against you personally, but the following things:
- The act of arguing for something you don't believe in.
- Your idea of what courtesy is and when it should be practiced.
- Utilitarianism and using it to form arguments when you don't believe in the ideology as a whole.
- Humans being biologically designed as omnivores.

Hypnos - Raging Tide

It

it wat? don't just stop there

I see wat u did dere ;o

skyxiii

Lol Hypnos, the forums don't like me copying and pasting so my first attempt to post a reply didn't come through. I rewrote the whole thing so it's there now if you want to read it (l|._.)

Hypnos - Raging Tide

nah...I will pass, such length discouraged me (l|._.)

Horatia - Dreamweaver

skyxiii wrote: »

Sorry about that. Post didn't come through. I'll try again. Hope it comes through this time >.<. These forums don't like my copying/pasting so I have to retype my entire response ('.__.)

As you wish.

I believe that your analogy lacks depth of comparison. We're talking about ideologies here, not hardware tools.
It's like asking why not use biological weapons to infect all our enemies in war with contagious diseases instead of bullets?
Bottom line here is if someone argues with something, using its value and worth to compliment their points, that they don't believe in then the result is an argument that lacks substance.
I personally don't want to argue with someone who is arguing with something they don't believe in.

I believe the analogy I used works well, as yes, they are ideologies, but any idea can be used as a tool. When working with math, you use theorems and laws to prove what you say is correct. You take parts of what works, and you apply them, just like you would a tool. I can't build a respectable argument without having tools from what works. If I use just one idea, then it will have flaws. If I use multiple ideas where they apply, it works out. As I said, I don't "completely believe in them," but I do believe each idea has its pros and cons, and I tend to focus and use the pros. Philosophy and morality are imperfect by nature, and therefore you must use what is best

First off, you need to understand that I brought up this in response to utilitarianism. You are wrong when you say my "argument" holds no place in this subject because I wasn't trying to make an argument, but rather a stance against the ideology. But you just stated that you don't believe in said ideology,
If you're going to use only parts of utilitarianism to argue your points, and if you don't believe in utilitarianism in its entirety, - then it is not utilitarianism. You came at me earlier with the entire solid block of utilitarianism and even asked me to argue by its bounds. Absolutely no where in your post did you give even a single impression that you didn't believe in said ideology. But you just stated plainly that you don't believe in utilitarianism, so why are you arguing for it now? Despite this contradiction, I'll still counter.

The reason I said to use utilitarianism is because that was the basis of my argument, under the impression that morality was the subject, as courtesy follows under that. It also is the only way in which a common ground can be found, being that if you follow something such as absolutism, you first have to prove it is, without a doubt, morally courteous. As absolutes in morality cannot be established due to the millions of different ways you can make the same action both immoral and moral, such an idea would not work. Relativism would not work because then your stance nor mine would be right or wrong, ending the argument and not progressing us any further. Utilitarianism can be used to prove what is courteous though based on the values of everything.

I argue for utilitarianism in this instance because it works better than the rest to express my personal feelings on the subject. To explain this, take the U.S. political system. Republicans and Democrats, two opposites. Nearly everyone will not fit in either one because they have beliefs spreading across the spectrum, placing them somewhere between the two. Now, lets increase that spectrum to include all the philosophical (and even religions as they have moral basis), each with its own end. How many people will completely be at one end or another of any of those? Almost no one will be extremist, they will fall somewhere in the middle, and hence not have a single belief, but they will favor things which fit for them from multiple ideas. This is where I am, somewhere in the middle, using the tools of ideas to express (and argue) my personal beliefs.

Yes, I can and will directly deny that we were biologically designed to eat meat - if by "biologically designed" you mean what nature intended for us originally disregarding evolution. This is exactly contrary to what we were taught in ESS 104 - Prehistoric Life so I will make a direct refutation.

The evidence you present for humans eating meat is that we have canines. Our "canine" teeth are just that, a name. True canine teeth are much longer and sharper. In fact, other vegetarian animals, like horses, also have these pseudo-canine teeth.
Additionally, do a little research about chimpanzee teeth. They have true canine teeth, yet they remain largely (probably more than 95%) vegetarian.
If we simply define omnivorism as having the capability of eating both animals and plants, then sure, humans are omnivores. But you specifically stated that "we were biologically designed" that way.
Scientific evidence support that our ancestors almost exclusively ate plants, and therefore eating meat would not be something we were "designed" to do, but rather a choice that our kind has made.
I will finish by also presenting anatomical evidence. Human physiology shares an incredible amount of similarities with herbivore physiology. Our teeth, saliva, and intestines are dissimilar to true omnivores or carnivores.
Teeth - Like herbivores, we don't have extremely sharp/pointed front teeth used to tear flesh.
Saliva - Like herbivores, our saliva isn't acidic and contains an enzyme that helps us digest grains.
Intestines - Like herbivores, our stomach acid isn't strong like that of those who need to digest tough animal muscle and bone. Moreover, like herbivores, our intestines are much longer than that of carnivores.

All valid points. Now, lets go to something we call can know (including our observers). There are certain things which animals cannot eat, an example being dogs eating grass. The reason it makes them vomit is that they do not have the proper enzymes to digest it, and so their body rejects it. However, we do have the ability to digest and absorb nutrients from meat, whether it is raw or cooked. Therefore, yes I can argue we are biologically designed to eat meat. We are omnivores by nature, so we eat both plants and animals.

Do you really think it's a coincidence that the peoples of the world who practice diets that emphasize meat consumption have the shortest life spans? Solid scientific and statistical fact support that the more meat we eat, the more disease we suffer and the sicker we get. This has been proven to be the case time and time again, over and over. There is absolutely no way you can deny this correlation.

You are right, vegetarians and vegans tend to live longer lives. However, you also must realize that those who choose such a life style also are aware of how to stay healthy. They actively attempt to live a healthy life style, thereby increasing their life span. Those who eat meat as well generally do not watch their diet, ensure they get the proper nutrients, and tend to eat food which is bad for them. So, there is a correlation, but I can also prove a correlation between the rise of video games and the decrease in crime. It does not mean that video games are the cause of that decrease, it just means that they happen to coincide.

I will also agree that those who eat meat do suffer diseases from meat as well. However, this is because we do not watch what we eat. If you eat rhubarb, you will find it is the same. You can get sick and die from eating it, so you don't eat it. Now, lets assume I lived alone in the wilderness and I raised my own chickens to eat. If I raised them properly, keeping them healthy and avoiding to allow any to become diseased, then they would be healthy to eat. If I stick them all in a coup where they barely have room to move, allowing them to defecate on one another and within their living space, they will become unhealthy. Understand that the reason there is illness from eating meat is not because it is bad for us, it is because of the way they are raised and processed.

Like you said, the carnivores you mentioned do not have a choice, whereas Homo sapiens, being the most advanced species on the planet, can make conscious decisions and judgment calls about morality.
By no means can you justify humans slaughtering animals through the arguments of benefiting the food-chain/ecosystem and overpopulation.
Doing so is quite obviously, in my opinion, a symptom of cognitive dissonance.
So let me as you something Horatia - If a technologically advanced aliens decided to land on Earth and started cutting us up with their laser weapons and putting your mother's, sister's, father's, and friend's severed limbs/extremities up for sale in stores for purchase and consumption - and they justified this by saying "Oh we're helping Earth's ecosystem by keeping human population down" - would you accept it? I know I, for one, would be against it.

We may have the ability to make moral choices, but you also have to realize we are the dominate predator in the world. We have every animal on our menu, but very few have us on theirs. Now, take any ecosystem where humans aren't present. Take out the main predator, and all the other populations start to grow because their numbers are not being thinned. As their numbers grow, they eat more food, causing less food to be available for the whole. Now, before you (not directly you skyxiii) start thinking I'm going to try to justify us by saying we are keeping them from starving, stop, because I'm not. I am going to say though that every predator is there to keep the number of prey lower, preventing all food sources to be consumed. If it were really unnecessary for anything to eat meat, there would have been no need for predators and everything would be a herbivore.

Now, for the aliens example, I will say I certainly would not be all for it, and I wouldn't be much of a person if I were, as it is my natural instinct to protect my kind, humans. However, such would be our place in the food chain. Sure, we can try to stop it, much like how a buffalo can fight off a wolf. However, if we are on another creatures menu, such as we are on a sharks when we enter the water, we must accept that placement. We can then either fight it off, or succumb to it.

Regardless, if you take a utilitarian standpoint, slavery can be justified in the physical sense. Gauging emotions like pleasure and suffering, as you mentioned, impossible and therefore attempts would be nonsensical - so let us work with extremes. If you took a small country and all its people and passed them out, one slave per family, to a larger country ~ you would be looking at 1 slave's suffering versus, on average, three or more family members benefiting. Utilitarianism can be used to argue for slavery because of the very fact that we can't measure emotions, so we are forced to say that the maximum capacity for a slave's suffering can only be tantamount to and never exceed the max capacity of one family member's pleasure - but since we have many more family members than we do slaves, utilitarians can say that those benefiting outnumber those suffering.
In conclusion, utilitarianism just doesn't work for me, so of course if you use the ideology to argue your points and ask me to argue under it, I'm going to refuse.

You have hit it exactly, we can't measure emotions, we can't measure pain or pleasure is MOST cases. However, take the scenarios I provided, a slave who refuses to obey at all. If killed, obviously his pain will cause a greater negative in the balance as nothing positive came out of him not having worked at all. This scenario alone proves slavery is not moral because the actions of another human being are not within our own personal control. We cannot make a slave act as such, it is their choice. Should they choose to not act as such, under utilitarianism you cannot harm or kill the slave, thereby freeing them in order to keep a positive in the balance. Surely, once this would spread, you wouldn't be able to have slavery. Utilitarianism can support slavery, but only if the slaves accept and want that position. I doubt though that the race of humans is like that of J. K. Rowlings house elves who want such a place in life.

Now, if you do not wish to argue under utilitarianism, that's alright. I believe I have established that under it, courtesy is not necessarily moral in this case. You have made arguments under it, though not about the primary subject of our debate. So, please do explain how asking permission and receiving it in order to make this thread be what is right. Use any ideology or theory you wish to argue this, and I will be glad to respond.

Finally - I'm not arguing against you personally, but the following things:
- The act of arguing for something you don't believe in.

I do not have a single religious belief, as I have already said I am agnostic. However, I will argue for the practice and belief in religion as I believe that they are necessary for humans, as well as being a moral anchor for many who are not completely sure of what their own morals are or should be. Is it then wrong for me to argue for such?

- Your idea of what courtesy is and when it should be practiced.

As it is, courtesy will be a dependent variable. You yourself said it is subjective, making it change with the situations and people involved. For example, in martial arts (or at least with my master), it is disrespectful to allow your gi to be open. If it starts to open due to training, you must turn away from your master and class and fix it, the same rules applying to the belt. This now applies to my real life, and whenever I have a shirt with buttons on it, I close it completely (including polo shirts), as I find it disrespectful.

Courtesy then changes from person to person, and by my values, I do not find it disrespectful to compare to public ideas. Were these both to be private (or were the authors themselves to have said specifically they do not want their guides to be subjugated to comparison or critique, I might have a different view. Well, perhaps not about them saying they do not want them to be, as if you do not want your ideas to be criticized, you should not make them public.

- Utilitarianism and using it to form arguments when you don't believe in the ideology as a whole.

While we can argue that utilitarianism is wrong in many ways, we also cannot prove that any other moral idea is correct in it's entirety. Therefore, until such time, we must use whatever works best for whatever it is best for doing. Just because one text is better than another, I will not still refuse to use the lesser for a citation in a paper. They both can make an statement alone, but an even more powerful one in collaboration.

- Humans being biologically designed as omnivores.

Now, to make this one, I think we should then test to see, in theory at least. Based on your post, I will assume you know far more about biology than I, so I will ask you for a hypothetical experiment. Let us assume we have a general population of animals which are omnivores, herbivores, and carnivores. If we feed the herbivores (variable group) meat and continued to over a period of six months, as well as feeding carnivores (variable group) foods which would be found in their natural environment but all plants, what would happen to each? Now, as omnivores can eat both, we split them into thirds, feeding one only meat (variable group), another only plants (variable group), and another a natural mixture of both (control group)

After doing this, compare what happens to each, and compare the results.

Thank you for going to such lengths for a discussion. It's nice to actually have an intelligent conversation with someone for once on these forums, instead of the rabble often found here. I look forward to your next response.

Hypnos - Raging Tide

After doing this, compare what happens to each, and compare t

plz finish your sentence ;o

Horatia - Dreamweaver

Hypnos - Raging Tide wrote: »

plz finish your sentence ;o

Fixed, and feel special because I only did it for your sake. b:chuckle

By the way, good news. Your guide so far is winning, though not with the numbers I was hoping to get. (7:1:1:1:0)

Hypnos - Raging Tide

I am flattered b:cute

ACLucius - Archosaur

I am really liking this conversation occurring here. b:victory

Furaxx - Lost City

very interesting conversation indeed lol. such an advanced conversation among maesters