And now I’ve seen someone call Peter Singer a speciesist.
"Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric." - Bertrand Russell
• about me
• recommended reading
• questions and comments
Eccentric Opinion
• about me
• recommended reading
• questions and comments
Eccentric Opinion
But instinctive territorial action is not the same as having a conscious reasoned understanding of property rights.What animals are capable of moral reasoning? How do you know it’s reasoning and not just instinct? What animals are capable of understanding property rights?
Well I’d argue that human property rights are simply a more sophisticated version of the territorial behaviour we see in animals. Anyone who owns a dog can tell you that you can train it to understand what belongs to it and what doesn’t.
(Source: hatredismymuse)
What animals are capable of moral reasoning? How do you know it’s reasoning and not just instinct? What animals are capable of understanding property rights?I can’t take anyone who thinks “moral veganism is a white supremacist bourgeois ideology” seriously.
(No, I’m not vegan, and no, I don’t believe in animal rights.)
not believing in animal rights at all is sorta gross
I think plenty of non-human animals have rights
On what grounds?
That they have the sort of self-reflection and agency necessary for moral responsibility.
I can’t take anyone who thinks “moral veganism is a white supremacist bourgeois ideology” seriously.
(No, I’m not vegan, and no, I don’t believe in animal rights.)
not believing in animal rights at all is sorta gross
I think plenty of non-human animals have rights
On what grounds?
Just got an extension on this paper. Anyone who’s interested in reading, proofreading, and critiquing the roughly half-way done (17 pages so far) final paper for my philosophy of law class is welcome to do so. The title is “The Unconstitutionality of the Constitution: Against the Legal Authority of Death & Hell”
Lysander Spooner themed.
I am interested.
There should be separate words for “owner of capital” and “proponent of capitalism”.
Open Borders
Counterarguments to common arguments against open borders:
- “Immigrants would take jobs that should go to natives.” Regardless of whether immigrants are taking jobs that would otherwise have gone to natives (the empirics I’ve seen lead me to believe that they don’t), why should being a native entitle anyone to a better chance at a job? Suppose someone made a similar argument against women in the workforce - “Women shouldn’t be allowed to work because they’ll take jobs from men” - or against efficiency - “People shouldn’t be efficient and productive because then it takes fewer people to do the same job”. If an employer wants to hire a native worker, and the worker is capable of consenting to taking the job (i.e. is not a child or extremely mentally unhealthy), then they can agree to a mutually beneficial contract. This is uncontroversial (except among the far left), so what’s different if the worker happens to live in another country?
- “Immigrants would change our culture.” Immigrants have changed American culture in the past, and no one today thinks that’s a bad thing. More importantly, culture is no more than what individuals who live in a certain area or identify with a certain group tend to do. If some native-born Americans suddenly adopted different cultural norms, no one would support deporting them.
- “Immigrants would abuse the welfare state.” There are two answers to this. The first is that it would not be difficult to restrict the welfare state to citizens. The second addresses the purpose of the welfare state. If the purpose of redistribution is to benefit the unlucky (those who happen to be born into low-income families or lose their jobs through no fault of their own), then people who are born in third-world countries are even more unlucky than either of those groups. If they come to first-world countries and work, they would be more productive than they would have been in their native countries (not to mention they could be fleeing things like wars and genocide), and, in a utilitarian calculus, the benefits to these immigrants far outweigh the benefits of the welfare state to those who are already wealthy by global standards.
- “Immigrants would increase crime.” I’ve not seen much empirical evidence to justify this claim. Yes, there are some places with many immigrants (or children of immigrants) that have high crime rates, but the same can be said of natives - plenty of high-crime areas don’t have any foreigners. And even if immigrants are disproportionally likely to commit crimes, that is not an argument against immigration unless you also believe that native-born groups who are disproportionately likely to commit crimes should be deported as well.
- “We live here, so we decide the rules.” Even if that’s true, what’s good about current rules? The above arguments show why current rules are bad (or at least internally inconsistent), so why not change them? More fundamentally, though, why do you get to decide the rules? If I own a house and want to rent it out to an immigrant, under what authority can the government say that I can’t? Does it own my house? If so, how did it come to own it? If I am a business owner and want to hire an immigrant, and the immigrant wants to work for me, what authority does the government have to stop a mutually beneficial voluntary exchange? Does it own my business? The country is not owned by the government, it is a composite of a large number of properties with different owners, administered by a government. Government is a service, not an owner - if you always hire the same plumber to work on your pipes, that doesn’t mean he owns them, so why is it different for government?
- “Open borders mean you don’t know who’s coming and going.” “Open borders” doesn’t necessarily mean “no borders”. Under open borders people could still have to register before entering a country, it would just mean that they wouldn’t be denied entry once registered.
Socratic Apology: Crypto-Marxist Randroid: stirnerwasrightmarxwaswrong: I have made several efforts to read this...
Among other things, he lists Robert Nozick as an anarchist.
he lists Robert Nozick as an anarchist.
Robert Nozick… anarchist.
Nozick, the same guy who said anarchism is impossible because a state would inevitably emerge?
What.
(Source: gnarlhess)
“The Spanish flu of 1918 killed 25-50 million people. World War II killed 60 million people; 107 is the order of the largest catastrophes in humanity’s written history. Substantially larger numbers, such as 500 million deaths, and especially qualitatively different scenarios such as the extinction of the entire human species, seem to trigger a different mode of thinking—enter into a ‘separate magisterium’. People who would never dream of hurting a child hear of an existential risk, and say, ‘Well, maybe the human species doesn’t really deserve to survive.’”
— Eliezer Yudkowsky
hatredismymuse asked: utilitymaximiser, utilitymaximiser, utilitymaximiser
Not surprising, given that he is the only person on tumblr I interact with, besides you.
Who are three tumblr users that you associate me with?
Not that I’m active enough to be associated with that many users.
(Source: lazeramsey, via hatredismymuse)
Be cautious of large inferential distances
If you’re a libertarian and are used to talking to people familiar with libertarian arguments, you may become accustomed to them knowing a good number of your unstated assumptions. But If you’re talking to someone who is not very familiar with political philosophy (or politics in general), you should adjust for that as much as possible. If someone says, “Incandescent bulbs are bad for the environment and should be banned”, and you say, “No, we own ourselves. Unless you think we’re slaves!” you’re not going to convince anyone. If anything, you’re contributing to negative stereotypes of libertarians.
There should be a gag rule for non-physicists talking about quantum physics.
I think 90s-style websites are more aesthetically pleasing (if they don’t use the blink tag or play midis in the background).damnnn looks goodI know. Way better!I actually think it’s worse.
How so?
