My case is that it’s a universal human trait and that it’s inevitable to some degree in everyone because that’s what our brains are programmed to do: think about the organism in which they exist first.
It would be foolish from my perspective to disregard that truth just because it might be unsettling to some people. I embrace it and try to figure out how to live with it rather than change it. I don’t think it can be changed.
Social darwinism obviously makes no sense. Selection isn’t done at the societal level or even the individual level, but rather at the genetic level. But I do believe that the people who do extremely well in a society do so because the interplay between their genes and their environment ultimately yields a human that functions better than others in their given environment.
This isn’t to say that that process is right or wrong, it’s simply inevitable. Some people will always do better than others. Equality of material possession, moral consideration or general adaptiveness is unlikely, some people will always be at the top. If I could choose I’d like to be at the top but I will settle for somewhere in the middle.
What process of logic did you ______ that “truth” from?
Fill in the blank for me.
You are so full of contradictions it is not even worth it. You do not even know the implications for the things you say from paragraph to paragraph. You’re a sociopath and not even worth conversing with. Go rape some people while you hold up traditional values of authoritarianism.
The land of the free is a rhetorical self delusion as is the national fondness for symbols like the statue of liberty. They’re ways of assuring ourselves (self deception) that we’re free when we’re really not and haven’t been for a very long time. What’s ironic is that many of the same people who wrote the declaration of independence with all its wonderful prose about inalienable individual rights and equality then turned right around and made another government. First in the Articles of Confederation which many found lacking in just ten years!! and then in the Constitution which is a far more centralized document than the Articles were.
People may talk about freedom but they’re empty words mostly. I don’t see a real desire for freedom, I see a desire for varying degrees of slavery couched in language about freedom. It’s funny how ignorant humans can be about themselves.
Do you think every single banker or lawyer or politician is a sociopath? What about every other profession? How would you know the difference? On this forum I’ve run into a lot of moralizing but this is the internet. In real life I think I fit right in with my society.
Doubtful even if I were a sociopath. Ted Bundy was an extreme example.
I’m not incapable of logic, I just see no reason to study it extensively.
If I’m inconsistent to some degree than it doesn’t really bother me. I use this forum as practice that’s about it.
Lol irony. How do I know that you’re not full of contradictions? Passing judgment on me and then maybe going out to take advantage of little girls because hey…they gave consent right? Save your holier than thou routine I don’t buy it internet scum.
You’re an unpersuasive libertarian drone and I never really had much interest in conversing with you to begin with. You’re a temporary form of entertainment and you’re not that entertaining. Go preach freedom to people who don’t care for it.
This is hilarious. You cannot even fill in the blank. How can you know if anything is true if you do not understand logic? You see no reason because you think you are smart enough to know innatley, grammar. But, grammar is not logic.
You have not pointed any out.
I don’t even get it. You are now accusing me of behaving like you and Ted Bundy. This is another example of why you need logic. You are saying illogical things, they are called non sequiturs…
What does my libertarianism have to do with your psychology?
We are not “temporary entertainment” for you as you have thousands of posts.
I think you are here casing the arguments against what your pipe dreams of control and minpulation stand for. YOU are at the mises forums. I am not on some Skinner-esque, Mussolini value forum. Just another contradiction in your logic (or lack of it).
Are you aware of logical fallacies? There are several in your last post. You need logic.
Fortunately for all of us bloomj doesn’t even understand the very subject he is focusing on, that being psychology, psychology certainly doesn’t favor authoritarianism. (It has consistently shown that authority corrupts even normal empathetic people. Authority and sociopathic characteristics together, most people in positions of authority exhibit sociopathic characteristics by the way, is a recipe for disaster.) Psychology is in fact the reason I am a market anarchist. With his current mindset he will fail at effectively manipulating and/or persuading people. (His natural inclination is to resort to external forms of motivation such as simply threatening people in order to get them to comply. This is not a good way of getting things done in the long term. As we market anarchist/anarcho-capitalists/crackpot libertarians are well aware of.)
Perhaps you should reread what I wrote, but for your benefit, I will requote the most crucial section:
Actually, I’ll just go ahead and requote the next section too:
The point of legal consent is to highlight whether or not a person’s consent is recognized legally. In other words, if a man slips a woman a date rape drug, and then he proceeds to have sex with her, it doesn’t matter if she gives consent (if there is a window of time before she passes out), because if she decides to press charges, it can be said that her “consent” was not legal. In other words, the man aggressed against her and acted against her will.
For the sake of argument, let’s assume that two 14 year olds have consensual sex with each other and that they are in a state where the age of consent is 16. Saying that they did not consent is ridiculous - they just had consensual sex. To say otherwise is to say that they did not act consensually. In other words, it is to say that they did not give permission and that they used force against each other. But they most certainly did not.
There is also another key distinction between drugs and not having a fully developed brain. The one alters the mind whereas the other does not. A woman who is dateraped has an altered mind. It is entirely possible that she would not have given any possible consent she might have been able to give had her mind not been forcibly altered (we are assuming, again, that she was able to consent just before passing out). But two 14 year olds or two 20 year olds do not have altered minds. Maybe they will regret their actions later and maybe they won’t. But their minds were not altered. Their consent was actually consent.
What you are arguing is that their consent should not be treated as consent legally. And I understand that there are many people who are of this opinion. But it is logically absurd to say that they have not really consented when they have demonstrated that they already have.
Okay. You are just spouting off logically absurd statements. People who are under 25 make decisions for themselves all the fucking time. It really doesn’t matter if you don’t trust that people under 25 can make decisions for themselves, because they do in fact make decisions for themselves. Furthermore, value is subjective. Just because you disagree with someone else’s decision doesn’t make your belief right. What if the person actually making the decision is right and you are wrong? Huh? Did that thought ever cross your mind? No. I’m certain it hasn’t.
Nice try at the verbal sleight of hand there. “An individual’s ability to vocalize or otherwise demonstrate a ‘yes’ or ‘no’” = consent. An individual’s ability to consent should not be the guiding criterion for whether or not their consent was legal? It should be the first question asked in any legal matter! Did the person actually consent? Then you can start talking about whether or not their consent was legally binding. If two 13 year olds consent to having sex with each other, then they have consented. To say otherwise is to imply that they did not give each other permission to have sex; in other words, that they used force. But clearly they did not.
You. Need. Logic. Badly.
This is the danger of people making statements about things they don’t understand. Not having a fully developed brain != impaired. Logic. You need it. For someone to be impaired, there needs to be a comparison. Impaired compared to what? A 12 year old is not impaired for not having a fully developed brain because his future self has not existed yet. If a 12 year old plays soccer and bumps his head, you could then state whether or not he is impaired.
From wiktionary:
People like to say “hearing impaired” for someone who is deaf, but they are using it metaphorically (unless the person was not born deaf). If the person was born deaf, that person’s natural state is to be deaf. A 12 year old is a 12 year old and has yet to be 25.
You really need logic.
My goodness. I’m gonna break this down for you:
bloomj31 says that he has beliefs X.
gotlucky says that he has beliefs Y.
bloomj31 asserts that God exists and has beliefs Z.
bloomj31 asserts that he does not know what God’s beliefs Z actually are, and that he has no way of actually knowing what they are.
There are certain things we can reason from this set of premises. One of them is that my beliefs could actually be what God believes. Another is that both you and God could believe the same things. But guess what? You have no way of knowing because you have asserted that you have no way of knowing what God does or does not believe.
You.
Need.
To.
Study.
Logic.
Even if you only studied categorical syllogisms. You don’t even have to study symbolic logic, but boy would that greatly help you. Just study it even a little. Seriously. So many of your statements are just nonsense. Literally. There is no sense to be made from them. It’s amazing.
They may have at the time demonstrated an ability to say “yes” or “no” but I see no reason why the law should honor their will or assume that they were in a condition to be able to comprehend the nature of the choice. There’s no reason why the law should acknowledge what they said at the time if there’s no reason to believe they possessed the cognitive capacity to understand the decision at the time. I have seen no reason to think a 14 or 16 year old understands what they are they’re consenting to, especially when it involves sex. They’re cognitively impaired individuals.
What is the “mind?” Do you think it’s somehow separate from the brain? It’s just an output of the brain. Drugs alter the output of the brain. So does having an undeveloped brain. In both cases the actors are functionally impaired.
Another way of saying this is that her brain was working differently than it would have otherwise been had she not been impaired. If she was drugged during the time of the incident then she was not acting with full cognitive capacity and therefore wasn’t fully cognizant of her choices. Therefore she couldn’t have given legal consent. The same can be said of someone working with an underdeveloped brain.
Again you talk about mind and brain as if they were separate. The mind is a product of the brain. Therefore having an altered mind means having an altered brain and having an altered brain means having an altered mind. There is no fundamental distinction between brain and mind they are the exact same thing. If consent is given under a state of impairedness, it’s not common practice and I see no reason personally, for the law to acknowledge the consent as a meaningful expression of the will of the actor.
They have demonstrated the ability to say yes or no not the cognitive capacity to understand the meaning of the choice. For their “consent” to be treated legally I think there needs to be reason to suspect that they made the choice with the cognitive capacity to understand it which they couldn’t possibly have. Therefore their verbal “consent” should not be treated as consent legally.
Yes they make decisions for themselves but they do so with an impaired brain. Luckily not all of them end up killing themselves or having children out of wedlock or whatever. My parents are largely responsible for keeping me under control until I started to get to the point where I could manage my own life by myself. I’m glad they looked out for me and didn’t honor my decisions when they were based on poor reasoning and youthful stupidity.
I’d rather act and be proven wrong than do nothing and be proven right.
No. The first question should be “what condition were they in at the time?” If they were in the condition of being mentally incompetent for reason of youthful cognitive underdevelopment then it really doesn’t matter what wishes they might’ve expressed at the time.
No it’s to say that they acted while fundamentally impaired by their own undeveloped equipment. They may have vocalized consent but they did so while under a state of partial impairedness. There’s no reason to honor their wishes.
I think you need to study case law badly. Go look at some statutory rape cases, see what the legal questions were and how consent among minors is treated. Then you’ll understand how outdated your idea of legal age for consent has become.
Compared to the brain of someone who’s 25.
The stages of brain development are well documented. His future self doesn’t need to exist to know that his 25 year old self will have a far more developed frontal lobe than his 12 year old self unless he suffers from severe retardation or brain damage. He’s acting while impaired at 12.
I believe deafness is a consequence of physiological and/or cognitive abnormalities. Sometimes people are born deaf but it’s still an abnormality. I’m not well studied in cases of deafness but I know sensory perception is a function of the brain. I know that someone who cannot see may have a problem at any number of feedback points between the neurons in the brain that decode visual information, the modules that render visual images in the eyes and the pathways in between. The brain’s normal state includes capabilities for processing sound and visual images, any number of deformities or abnormalities can result in hearing loss or blindness. It’s still not a normal natural state, it’s a biological equipment malfunction.
I understand that. But I believe that I do know what God believes just that I can’t substantiate the claim. I act on faith and the conviction that I am right.
I’ll maybe get around to studying logic eventually. I’m more concerned with other things right now. I can always learn how to better structure the ideas later. First things first, I need to understand the law and then the science. It’s not like I actually gain anything from studying logic at this point, convincing a bunch of libertarians about stuff wouldn’t net me much anyways.
We could argue about this nonsense forever but you will not change my mind and I doubt I will change yours. I think I’m done with this subject for now. I feel satisfied knowing that crazy dudes like you have no influence over the law and that the law reflects my philosophy more than it reflects yours, at least in my state. You can feel the satisfaction of knowing that in your imaginary free society that you might be able to legally fuck all the 12 year olds who’d agree to such a thing and that the Mises drones are all in favor of finding out what would happen. You get the last word again. Later.
Oh yeah, one more thing, sexual repression has been shown to cause all sorts of problems such as perversion and violence. So bloom in your world people would actually be more perverted and violent than they are now. Not that you care.
Did you really just say that an undeveloped brain is altered? Holy shit. Do you know the meanings of the words you even use?
The same can not be said of a person with an underdeveloped brain. You need to study logic.
First of all, they are not the exact same thing. The brain is the physical organ, and the mind is what you are aware of. The mind requires the brain. The brain does not require a mind. Second of all, you need to study logic.
Okay, again you are trying some verbal sleight of hand. They consented. You cannot change this fact by calling it an “ability to say yes or no”. Your problem with their consent is that you believe they do not have the capacity to understand all the possible consequences of their consent. Nobody fulfills this requirement. And of course, your “therefore” is a non sequitur. It does not follow that because someone cannot understand all the possible consequences of any given action that they must not be allowed to consent legally.
You. Need. To. Study. Logic.
Ok. That’s wonderful that you would have made all sorts of stupid decisions, in your opinion. But guess what? Being under 25 does not mean that you have an impaired brain.
Yes. I know you are a psycho. I’d rather let 10 guilty men go free than imprison an innocent man, but you’d rather imprison all 11 and be done with it.
No. The first question is whether or not someone consents. You don’t go around saying, “Well, what condition was that woman in before she was raped? Oh, she wasn’t drunk or stoned? Okay, well did she consent? No?”
It’s assbackwards man. You ask if she consented first, then if yes, then you find out what condition she was in.
There you go again with not understanding the word impaired. I provided the definition of impaired in my previous post. “Impaired” means “rendered less effective”. Maybe the problem is you don’t know what “rendered” means.
Oh boy. I don’t believe for a minute that you ever went to school to study law. Case law is precedent law. It was statutory law that raised the age of consent, not case law. Read the wikipedia links I provided earlier in the thread about the age of consent. That you don’t know the difference between case law and statutory law is quite telling.
It’s unbelievable how ignorant you are. I mean, how do you claim to study law and not know the difference between case law and statutory law? Holy shit.
No. You cannot compare a 12 year old to a separate person and claim one is impaired. The 12 year old is not impaired. The word you are trying to use in incompetent. But you keep using impaired. After the definition was provided. Holy shit.
More problems with logic here. The 12 year old cannot be “rendered less effective” than his yet-to-exist 25 year old self. I’m not going to bother providing a definition of “rendered”. I still have enough faith in you for you to do the legwork yourself.
Holy shit. Do you know what “normal” and “abnormal” mean? I did not say that a person born deaf was normal. I said that it could be claimed that it was his natural state to be deaf. Obviously, since the majority of people are not deaf, this would not be normal. But I never claimed that it was.
Just go study logic.
So now you claim that you do know what God believes? This is contrary to what you have claimed in the past. But certainly there is no way for you to substantiate this claim. Furthermore, now that you have changed your mind, how do you know what God believes?
Lmao. Logic is the tool to understanding things. You cannot understand anything without sufficient logic. The problem here is that you don’t have the sufficient reasoning skills to even understand law, as demonstrated by your complete ignorance regarding the difference between case law and statutory law.
Lmao. I think your feelings are hurt. I don’t think my penis could fit in a 12 year old even if I wanted it to. I’m just that big.
Context clues, don’t act like you aren’t aware of them. “Altered” may not be the right word, but an undeveloped brain is less able to make judgements than a developed one.
Resorting to semantic points doesn’t help anyone.
Neither have you.
Anyway, you guys want to fuck twelve year olds you can move to Thailand, but this thread is still fucking wierd.
But what a wonderful way to bring this whole stupidly disgusting conversation with libertarians back around to the OP. This right here is why I hate libertarianism, it leads supposedly morally principled people to the point of absurd retardation.
10 men guilty of what?
On second thought I don’t care. You make the most compelling argument against libertarianism for me. I needn’t say anything.
Ah, yes. The word fool. Someone with poor judgement or little intelligence. Reason is the only tool man has to make sense of the world around him. And you actively don’t want to improve this tool, which is especially sad considering how terrible you are at using it.
So if I’m a fool, what does that say about you?
It doesn’t matter. You think it’s okay to imprison innocent people. And you claim you aren’t a psychopath.
Okay. If you really don’t care, stop responding to people on this forum. Otherwise, it’s just more posturing from you.
Ceteribus paribus, it is true. However, all things are not equal. And it is a non sequitur to state that because a brain is not yet fully developed, then that person cannot be said to consent.
If you bothered to read the thread, troll19, then you would have noticed that I gave bloomj31 ample opportunity to fix his use of words. I even provided a definition. bloomj31 chose not to do that. On top of his willing ignorance, he has demonstrated that he is also lazy. I see no reason to pull my punches with someone who has no desire to actually improve their arguments or improve their understanding of the world.
Well, actually I have. Philosophy was neither my major nor minor in college, but I was fortunate enough to have been able to take courses in logic while attending college. You are someone who should probably brush up on your deductive reasoning skills. You have demonstrated in other threads plenty that you do not understand deductive logic.
I never said I was an expert in logic, only that I have studied it. So yes, taking courses in logic counts as studying logic.
I don’t need bloomj31 to match my word choice. But he actively doesn’t try to explain his meaning and he completely ignored the fact that I even introduced a definition. For all I know, he approved of my definition and still believed what he was saying.
No, I do not know what he means. He continued to use impaired in the same manner even after I provided a definition. Furthermore, from what he wrote, it really sounded like he considers people under the age of 25 impaired as I defined it. It is not true. Perhaps incompetent would be a better word, but he continued to use impaired. So, I am left to think that he really believes that 12 year olds have been “rendered less effective”, or to provide the meaning of rendered (something that bloomj31 doesn’t seem to understand either), it should read as “caused to be less effective”.
bloomj31 has stated that he is happy to remain ignorant. I see no reason to give him the benefit of the doubt regarding definitions when he has stated he does not wish to improve his understanding.
Man has evolved many tools for making sense of the world, many of which he doesn’t have much if any rational control over. In fact your sensory perception is a tool that you use just to perceive the physical world around you and it has been developed over thousands of years and continues to function without your rational choice. Your ability to understand language, your ability to empathize with other people, your ability to process and recall information, your ability to form moral judgments, your sexual desires, your desire for food and water etc etc etc. All processes mostly or completely out of your control. You think you use reason to make sense of the world, I think you mainly just use reason to make sense of your brain.
I do not need to develop just my reason but also my understanding of how little a role pure reason plays in my actions and the actions of others, how much there is going on behind the curtain so to speak. Only then can I actually understand human behavior.
You think you’re in control, I think your brain just tells you you are. You’re just a dog being wagged by his tail and then rationalizing it to make sense.
That I am wise for realizing the limits of human reason?
And you claim you’re a rational man and that perhaps that people like me should take you seriously. Who’s going to take you seriously if you say things like this?
If I had to choose between letting ten convicted murderers free just to free one man serving a two month sentence for something he didn’t do, I’d gladly keep the innocent man in jail along with the convincted murderers. What non-libertarian wouldn’t?
I am possibly below average on the empathy scale but I think sociopathy has to be contextualized. In my society I’m considered perfectly normal. In your free society I’d be considered sociopathic, but maybe that’s a good sign. Maybe I should take it as a compliment that libertarians perceive me as being sociopathic. It would be far more upsetting if libertarians thought I was one of them when I know I’m not.
I usually don’t respond to threads. I often just read them and shake my head. Every now and then something bothers me enough to post but usually I just let you guys do your thing. You often make better arguments against yourselves than I ever could. I’ve accumulated quite a few posts but I’ve been coming here for a while now. Almost two and a half years I think.
But look I’ll be honest. I struggle with taking every thought I have and then translating them exactly as they exist in my mind onto paper. I read a lot of stuff and my brain is constantly making all sorts of connections but then I find sorting and translating them difficult. I find myself typing out skeletons of posts and then fleshing them out over time. It is what it is.
Semantics is actually pretty important if you think about it. Using the wrong word can lead to all kinds of confusion that could have been avoided if the proper word was used. Even if you ignore the semantics of the issue that still doesn’t change the fact that bloom is wrong. People with fully devoloped brains, such as bloom, still have shown that they aren’t fully capable of making rational decisions. He appeals to God while admitting there is no evidence of God’s existence, not only that but he appeals to the morals of a God who commits heinous acts in the Old Testament. Empirical evidence has shown that societies that are sexually repressed are more perverted and violent and yet he continues to hold his irrational beliefs. A irrational person will rarely make good decisions, the whole point that bloom is getting at is that teenagers can’t make good decisions, by his same standards he should also be considered incompetent and incapable of giving consent.
I can’t believe you would defend a conservative. And you dare call yourself a leftist. LOL