DRwut actually not really, since even though izumi is gay as hell, being gay as hell still makes him happy
DRwut but is that cause he likes it or because there’s a group of people like him that smile upon that kind of stuff?
UserGoogol I’m really not a big fan of egoism, actually. (More of a utilitarian, although I’m shifting away from that because I think it might not be logically rigorous enough.) But the argument for rational egoism seems sensible enough to me. Things in the outside world only effect you in so far as they effect your mind. Thus, your happiness is something that effects you directly, while other people’s happinesses is more of an indirect thing.
UserGoogol Did that get cut off?
DRwut i never read that
DRwut nestor do you agree with objectivism?
DRwut http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivist_ethics this
TG|Nestor lemme have a looksee
UserGoogol Ayn Rand also sucks for taking the word “objectivist,” which is such a nice word that she had to burden with all the particular aspects of her philosophy.
TG|Nestor Likewise society has heaped negativity and scorn on the word ‘ego’
TG|Nestor you can’t mention that word except in a negative connotation
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DRwut ego should be neutral
TG|Nestor No, ego is the centralizing core of an individual’s existence. it’s his own unique gestalt that differs from everyone elses’
TG|Nestor you cant neutralize something so critical and expect people to be happy.
TG|Nestor you’re stripping individuality for group conformity.
UserGoogol That’s not how the dictionary defines ego.
UserGoogol It’s just… the self.
TG|Nestor my ego is different from yours, UG. Therefore it’s the sole identifying characteristic that makes me Nestor, and you UG
TG|Nestor all things being equal, the Ego is the soul’s fingerprint
TG|Nestor uniquely individual and identifying
DRwut In Freud’s theory, the ego mediates among the id, the super-ego and the external world. Its task is to find a balance between primitive drives, morals, and reality while satisfying the id and superego. Its main concern is with the individual’s safety and allows some of the id’s desires to be expressed, but only when consequences of these actions are marginal. Ego defense mechanisms are often used by the ego when id behavior conflicts wit
DRwut h reality and either society’s morals, norms, and taboos or the individual’s expectations as a result of the internalization of these morals, norms, and taboos.
UserGoogol Ah, that’s something of a distinct concept.
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TG|Nestor Freud was an asshat.
zakenayo oh fuck
MTHoopla @seen Jeffu
Keine-tan MTHoopla: Jeffu was last seen in #forum-m 7 hours, 39 minutes, and 41 seconds ago: Jeffu now to sleep after 20ish hours of going without. x_x
zakenayo the Japanese in “The Prestige” is the WORST I have ever heard
UserGoogol I think he popularized the word though, so linguistically he does have precedent.
UserGoogol I don’t think there’s an ego as you describe it. There’s no fundamental difference between individual selves, the difference is that I’m here and you’re over there and we have different emotions and feelings and personalities and all that stuff.
TG|Nestor that’s like saying that because Metallica has more platinums, they’ve defined the heavy metal music scene
UserGoogol But to say that there’s some fundamental essence sounds like spiritual bullshit.
DRwut UG unless you’re a solipsist
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zakenayo “The Prestige”?
* TG|Nestor is now known as Nestor_sensei
zakenayo Stormbreaker I meant
UserGoogol wut: Oh yeah sure. If solipsism is true, then the difference is that I’m real and he’s not.
Nestor_sensei haha
Nestor_sensei you’re not real~
Nestor_sensei I am
DRwut No, the difference would be that he’s you just a part of you that you can’t control
UserGoogol I beg to differ.
Nestor_sensei Prove to me you exist, UG
UserGoogol Wut: I suppose that would be the more precise way to put it.
Nestor_sensei carve your name in the universe so that no one, even myself, can ever doubt you didn’t exist.
UserGoogol Nestor: I can’t, but why would I want to, figment of my imagination?
DRwut “Metaphysical solipsism is the variety of idealism which maintains that the individual self of the solipsistic philosopher is the whole of reality and that the external world and other persons are representations of that self having no independent existence (Wood, p. 295). More tersely, if more vaguely, it is expressed by the assertion “I myself only exist”, in other words, it is the doctrine that no reality exists other than one’s self”
Nestor_sensei ohohoho~
Nestor_sensei but by buying into solipsism, you buy into the intrinsic value of the human self, the identifying ego component that seperates you from the whole of the world and sets you up as the sinle most important existence in the universe.
Nestor_sensei *single
UserGoogol What?
Nestor_sensei Just that.
Nestor_sensei As a solipsist, you say that everything around you essentially existys because you will it
DRwut or that everything around you is you
Nestor_sensei certainly an interesting divergence from societal ideologies, but not necessarily healthy.
UserGoogol What exactly do you mean by ego?
DRwut A solipsist may also understand that everything being a part of himself would also mean that harming anything would be harming himself with associated negative consequences such as pain. Or a solipsist might say that harming others is imprudent because the solipsist can only be uncertain of their real existence.
Nestor_sensei I recall reading something about… twelve? thirteen? years ago, where psychologists attributed sociopathic behavior to solipsism; in that the sociopath feels nothing in killing a member of society, because he is the final arbiter of his own existence
DRwut ” ”
UserGoogol Nestor: That would make sense, yeah.
Nestor_sensei So you’re crazy~
Nestor_sensei 
DRwut “Everything and everyone else is just a figment of imagination, so there’s no particular reason not to make these figments disappear by, say, mass annihilation. The subconscious mind could always imagine them back to life, if that’s what’s really wanted, anyway.”
UserGoogol Well I’m not really a solipsist. It can’t be disproven but it also can’t be proved, and acting as if there is an external reality seems to be more pragmatic.
Nestor_sensei we’ve diverged from the original topic of society versus the individual
UserGoogol In a sense, the difference between solipsism and non-solipsism is just a linguistic difference.
UserGoogol We sure as hell have.
DRwut I blame UG
Nestor_sensei One of the larger questions Olf and I have discussed that relate to this is whether the value of a human being outside of society actually exists.
UserGoogol You were the one who brought up solipsism, wut.
DRwut let’s not point fingers
Nestor_sensei If a society as a whole goes blissfully unawae of a human’s life, can he be said to ‘exist’ to said society?
UserGoogol It depends on exactly what you mean by “exist to said society.”
DRwut that’s true, most people act like a lot of people don’t exist, like their friends, family, and favorite celebrities are the only things that exist
Nestor_sensei simple. If you are completely unaware of a rock twenty miles away, does it exist for you? does it hold relevance?
Nestor_sensei understasnd that there’s a strong difference between physical existence and societal existence
UserGoogol “Societal existance” seems like a concept that really shouldn’t be described using those words.
DRwut if they don’t exist to society then physically they only exist as background
Nestor_sensei certainly, the rock is there (or is it?) in a physical form, but does its ackoledgement (or lack thereof) give it tangibility?
Nestor_sensei *acknowledgement
DRwut why are you arguing anthropic principle
UserGoogol wut: That’s something different.
Nestor_sensei does the individual exist outside of society?
DRwut it’s kind of related
UserGoogol If two systems do not interact, then certainly a person in one system cannot derive value from something in the other system.
Nestor_sensei you might recall a few months ago that there was a huge debate in here with Olf and I pretty much against the rest of the channel because we were debating the existence of humans that existed outside the scope of society
UserGoogol But ehmm… the rock and society do interact, even though they are not aware of it, so things get more complciated.
DRwut society is aware of the rock
DRwut so it exists
Nestor_sensei this woman gave birth to some kids, killed and buried them, and no one knew she’d done these things. Her own husband didn’t even know she’d been pregnant at all.
UserGoogol The word “existance” shoudl probably not be overloaded by using it on concepts like this.
UserGoogol Nestor: The woman is part of society, and she knew about the kids. Although I’ll admit that I’m rather wishy-washy on the morality of infanticide.
UserGoogol For unrelated reasons.
Nestor_sensei So holding her accountable to a ‘crime’ was societally impossible because without the acknowledgement of the infants, they held no verifiable merit.
Nestor_sensei if they weren’t ‘seen’ they weren’t ‘there’
DRwut “There exists one possible thing ‘designed’ with the goal of generating and sustaining ‘observers.’ ”
Nestor_sensei societal laws only exist within the society, though.
UserGoogol Do they?
UserGoogol Well at any rate, the woman was within society, so she should be under its jurisdiction.
Nestor_sensei but the infants weren’t, so did she commit a crime?
DRwut if you can’t see it then you can’t prove it exists
Nestor_sensei crime is dictated by a society.
DRwut socially
Nestor_sensei they existed outside the societal envelope
UserGoogol Yes it is, but I don’t see why just because a crime is dictated by society that something can only be a crime if it harms society.
Nestor_sensei she was the only person in the world that knew of them when they were alive, so therefore she had the ability to arbitrate fate over them
DRwut crimes are dictated by society to protect society, if they’re not in society then the laws aren’t extended to them
Nestor_sensei exactly
Nestor_sensei therefore no crime was committed.
UserGoogol Her society had a rule against baby-killing, she broke that rule. Simple as that. Now, whether baby-killing should be illegal is a different question.
Nestor_sensei What she did was certainly reprehensible, though
DRwut UserGoogol: her society had a rule against killing babies in only her society
UserGoogol Consider a different example. Some space-traveller goes off to a populated planet and nukes the entire thing so that nobody survives. This planet was not known to his homeland, so it was effectively “seperate from society.” But it’s still reasonable for his society to be pissed off at this, because there is value in enforcing a rule against nuking random planets.
Nestor_sensei if she’d killed someone else’s children, for example
DRwut it’s not separate from society because they acknowledge it exists
UserGoogol wut: No, in my thought experiment they don’t know about the planet.
UserGoogol Or wait, are you talking about something else.
Nestor_sensei there are things that exist outside of a society because the zone of perception is able to accept those things as external.
Nestor_sensei Of course, that holds no relevance
Nestor_sensei Well, we can argue that the planet was known, but not known to be inhabited.
Nestor_sensei therefore he’s judged accordingly; I.E. he willfully nuked a planet against societal expectations of nonviolence
Nestor_sensei not for the genocide of an entire world’s peoples
DRwut UG counter example/argument?
UserGoogol I don’t entire understand what Nestor is saying.
DRwut I’m trying to figure out the nonrelevant part
DRwut the rest I understand
Nestor_sensei Let me try and explain.
UserGoogol I don’t. My argument seems fairly clear. Societies make laws because they want their people to act in a particular way. If you don’t act that way, they’ll punish you. It doesn’t matter who you don’t-act-that-way to.
UserGoogol The lines Nestor is making makes no sense.
DRwut ah, even if something is seen as outside society it’s still unacceptable to do them wrong because they’re still in society by way of expectations
Nestor_sensei the society of the US recognizes another society (like russia) not because it holds relevance to their own existence, but because that society falls within the US’s zone of perception.
UserGoogol Another way of putting it, I suppose, is that if an individual is a part of society, then anything that individual interacts with is a part of society by the transititve property.
DRwut I can’t really find a middle between you and nestor
Nestor_sensei removing all interactions, extradtions, and shit like that, unless there is an internal societal law that forbids violence against a nonsocietal, you could go about the business of killing them and not be held responsible. as if you weren’t killing real people
Nestor_sensei wut: we’re having a discussion. just enjoy it
Nestor_sensei 
DRwut but most societies laws don’t state “you can only not kill american babies”
UserGoogol Maybe I don’t understand what you mean by the word “society.”
DRwut i think in the baby killing example he just meant people in general
UserGoogol Oh wait, maybe I understand what you’re saying. Is it that “sovereignty” doesn’t extend to dead babies and stuff like that?
DRwut in the baby killing example he meant “the totality of concepts of all purely natural relations and institutions between man and man”
DRwut ?
DRwut or “group of people that form a semi-closed social system, in which most interactions are with other individuals belonging to the group.”?
UserGoogol Well we’ve been talking for two hours, and I should’ve gone to bed one hour ago, so let’s justend that here.
Nestor Imported piece, Objectivism, Quick Post, Rant, Sociology