Good and bad within the universe

[Jessica]

Another reason is children are not fully autonomous. I think most of us find exploiting that fact particularly disturbing. It's not exactly the same but I think it's along similar lines as to why most people find animal abuse disturbing.

Ah yes. It's like, an abuse of trust.. because adult humans have inherent power over children and animals.

[Audiogen]

Another reason is children are not fully autonomous. I think most of us find exploiting that fact particularly disturbing. It's not exactly the same but I think it's along similar lines as to why most people find animal abuse disturbing.

[Jessica]

of course that's possible, but statistically if you kill a bunch of kids you're going to be removing more potential years than if you kill a bunch of old folks.

i do think we would kill dice by throwing a ball in front of his car. when you're driving and something pops up in front of you, there's no time to think "that's an animal, i'd better swerve" or "that's not an animal so fuck it".

i don't care about the quantity of years, i care about the quality.
no i mean i do get the logic of what you're saying. i just don't feel it. and since it isn't usually a case of kill a adult or child.. maybe the world would be nicer if that thing people feel about a kid being killed that makes it feel extra bad was felt about adults being killed too.

[Undies]

but no-one can know if the child was going to die next year in an accident.

of course that's possible, but statistically if you kill a bunch of kids you're going to be removing more potential years than if you kill a bunch of old folks.

i do think we would kill dice by throwing a ball in front of his car. when you're driving and something pops up in front of you, there's no time to think "that's an animal, i'd better swerve" or "that's not an animal so fuck it".

[Jessica]

well, assuming an average life expectancy of 75 years, if you kill a 60 year old you're effectively stealing 15 years from him, whereas if you kill a 5 year old you're stealing 70 years from him.

i don't know if that's the standard line of thinking on this subject, but it does make a logical argument that it's a greater crime when done to someone younger.

but no-one can know if the child was going to die next year in an accident. i get the thinking, and i think people mix that with the emotional response Neon describes below... but i don't think it makes sense and i don't actually feel it myself.

I think it has more to do with the fact that children are innocent. They are trusting and don't know the ways of the world yet, and a part of us doesn't want that naivety to be violated. You know, we fill their heads with Santa and the Tooth Fairy and try so hard to keep the bad things out. Then, sometimes, they find out in the worst way what the world is.

And they can't understand. Not that it really is any better for adults. Adults can try to convince themselves of lots of stuff, but really we're all just big kids.

and i think part of why i don't feel it myself is how strongly i agree with that last sentence there. i look around at humans and just see these cute innocent creatures, even the "bad" ones are usually only bad because they're hurt and don't know how to heal themselves. i think there is a certain innocence just in being this super-intelligent (compared to most species) creature, but still so clueless and lost. so yeah maybe i just don't see such a big difference.

There's something I've noticed, something that I think has to do with an "innate" sense of morality specific to our species. I'll be driving along a country road and a squirrel or rabbit runs out in front of the car so I'll swerve to avoid it without the chance to consciously think about it. Swerving is actually the dangerous thing for me to do; I risk driving off the shoulder of the road and over-correcting or hitting someone else head-on. You've probably done the same thing or something similar and I don't think this is a learned behavior. In no way would hitting a small animal decrease or enhance my chances of survival. It's strange.

but it is learned. small children will be rough with animals until they're taught that the animal feels, and learns empathy. and children kill bugs.
how far back? since we were officially "modern human"? Or before? When does an innate trait become innate and when did the morality you're talking about become innate?
what about people who don't swerve for rabbits and squirrels?
what about people who can kill whales and elephants?
i'm not sure that the urge to swerve isn't more a reaction just to anything that goes in front of the car. you might swerve if a ball rolled across the road. we'd have to test that. someone needs to hide on Dice's route and roll a ball in front of him.
if it IS about not killing the creature, it's an extremely illogical "innate morality" because there are so many other examples of humans treating animals badly.

[tumbling.dice]

There's something I've noticed, something that I think has to do with an "innate" sense of morality specific to our species. I'll be driving along a country road and a squirrel or rabbit runs out in front of the car so I'll swerve to avoid it without the chance to consciously think about it. Swerving is actually the dangerous thing for me to do; I risk driving off the shoulder of the road and over-correcting or hitting someone else head-on. You've probably done the same thing or something similar and I don't think this is a learned behavior. In no way would hitting a small animal decrease or enhance my chances of survival. It's strange.

[neonspectraltoast]

Emotions and logic aren't mutually exclusive. It isn't logical to deny an emotional state of affairs.

[Undies]

^ i think that's the emotional side of why most people feel that way. and since a majority of people make decisions based on emotions rather than logic, it's probably the real reason most people find crimes against children to be worse.

but j ruth asked for the logical argument, and there really is one, even if it's not the deciding factor for most people.

[neonspectraltoast]

I think it has more to do with the fact that children are innocent. They are trusting and don't know the ways of the world yet, and a part of us doesn't want that naivety to be violated. You know, we fill their heads with Santa and the Tooth Fairy and try so hard to keep the bad things out. Then, sometimes, they find out in the worst way what the world is.

And they can't understand. Not that it really is any better for adults. Adults can try to convince themselves of lots of stuff, but really we're all just big kids.

[Undies]

If someone could explain (logically) what makes it more bad when a child is killed than an adult, i'm interested in understanding.

well, assuming an average life expectancy of 75 years, if you kill a 60 year old you're effectively stealing 15 years from him, whereas if you kill a 5 year old you're stealing 70 years from him.

i don't know if that's the standard line of thinking on this subject, but it does make a logical argument that it's a greater crime when done to someone younger.

[WritersPanic]

I think this era of the internet has made me realize just how new of a technology it is. The internet is now a curiosity for more than just geeks, technologists and academics and it seems as where out in society, we have the opportunity to present ourselves and process the formalities of civilized behavior, on the internet, there is a restricted quality to it which seems to make a lot of people act on Id to reference Freud, or rather impulses and lash out in some subconscious ways. There are many parallels I draw between "cancel culture" and events like The Salem Witch Trials or Book Burnings.

You really hit the nail on the head with this. I've been involved from the beginning of personal computers. At first it was just me and the machine. There was only scant talk of a PC ever getting connected to anything. But that changed quickly as the RS-232/422 standards were fashioned into a PC bus circuit board. Then just about any modem could be used as long as it use this protocol.

Bulletin Boards went up all over the country. I spent around $150 to get a 300 baud modem to connect with Compuserve and converse with fellow geeks and nerds over phone lines. An upgrade to the modem and I was able to shift to a blistering 450 baud once I connected. This was 1984.

Fast forward to the mid-late 90s and PCs were a lot more social to a wider audience. The interface became grossly simple (to people who knew how to dial a phone with code). But with this more intuitive interface came something new to the game; girls! Lots of them. In a couple of years it went from maybe 3% girls to 47% girls. In the late 90s there were actually more women on social media than horny men. Only it wasn't really called social media, it was just chat rooms and email.

In all of this, the truth you point out plays through. People online became factions. Unpopular people in chat rooms knew it fast. Some stayed to harass (trolling today), others wisely found a better place to hang out (funny how that historical lesson is relearned over and over in the digital age). For decades it was just sex, psychology and ads, for more sex. I recall a 90s estimate that around 80% of the internet traffic was porn. No idea how true that was. After all, I read it on the internet!

When politics infected the web, we got to see the real curse. The formula is simple;

• Get people interested in political discussions by pointing out the good things that the government has done.
• Then get them used to seeing the names and faces of the people who made these wonderful things happen.
• Then point out the people who didn't help make this wonderful thing happen.
• Then tell them about the wonderful things YOU will do for them since you have decided to make a political bid.
• Along the way, inject your base political philosophy into the discussion by starting an innocent discussion about other kinds of politics.
• Merge this with social matters so that people begin to associate "good" politics with other good things in their life.
• Allow the messages to overlap so that the various political factions become a confusion.
• Make your message the most obvious by slowly "defeating" the political arguments YOU introduced in the first place.
• Craft your message according to its appeal and the numbers of followers you can collect.
• Convert followers into votes by demonizing your opponents (politely by pointing out that they opposed something you supported that passed).

Naturally all of this can be accomplished in print. But over the web the transition time is reduced by many years. All of history becomes compressed into snappy, rhyming slogans (so they are easily remembered, rote learning). Today we see politics getting to be exponentially invasive in people's lives. That too is a strategy. It overwhelms to the point people walk away. This is how you created a large undecided pool to feed another sequence of messages and basically repeat the process on a micro scale instead of the macro scale that got the whole thing started.

The beauty of the plan is that everybody is being manipulated, but thinks they are in control. A really obvious example is how quickly objection to Trump became so visceral. Today I meet people who are still making claims that were debunked years ago about a variety of subjects and candidates. This is because they were programmed and don't have the capacity to think beyond this programming. And that's actually natural for human beings.

Computers have accelerated our capacity to be driven into a frenzy. Like tearing down Francis Scott Key's statue. Aside from being a lawyer and writing a poem, wtf did he do to anyone? Nothing it seems. But the program for destroying relics of the past was specific when it was used to hijack the Dylan Roof victims and go after Confederate flags, statues and even graves!

It's the digging up graves part that seems like people might give pause to the radicalization of modern politics. But it didn't.

[Jessica]

You know what I don't have, that eeeeveryone else seems to, is a feeling that something happening to a child is worse than to an adult.
like when someone hurts or kills a child and everyone kind of sucks in a breath and shakes their head and say i can never understand people doing that to a child
and i honestly don't think i care less about children than others, i think i care more about adults.
If someone could explain (logically) what makes it more bad when a child is killed than an adult, i'm interested in understanding.

[Jessica]

i do agree. i actually had a further paragraph to my post before yours about how i believe there is an objective good.. ultimate goodness is ultimate love. but i deleted it because i didn't want to confuse things.

[Audiogen]

There is no "good" or "bad" in the Universe, outside of ourselves that is (or any other morally reasoning beings that may exist elsewhere.) On the subconscious level I believe there must be some basic ideas of right and wrong that are innate to our species. It is hard for us to state these ethical rules in a concise manner, however. Consider "Thou shalt not kill". Very straightforward. But what if your life is being threatened by another person? Or a loved one with a terminal illness asks for your help ending their life? And some people believe the death penalty is OK for certain crimes.

Good and bad are just ideas, whether genetically inherited from the distant ancestors of humans or it's just stuff we come up with to try and keep order in an increasingly complex world.

I essentially agree with this.

I'll touch on karma, I know there are a few ways people define karma, none of which I consider myself all that well-versed in. But I don't ascribe to karma as some universal principle of balancing good morals with bad morals or retributive action the universe hoists upon us. Tropical Breeze, in another thread with a topic adjacent regarding meaning asked what to make of a child less than 1 dying. That example highlights that we can assert there are some edge cases where an individual has not yet had the ability to develop moral standing.

However, I think some, perhaps many of us get into patterns of maintaining moral standings and are unwavering with them, both good and bad, to where often at some point the opposite reaction happens, which is sort of karmic,.

[Audiogen]

A lot of what we see as good or bad in our humanity is our primitive, animal nature creeping in. Our minds are made for surviving in the wild. By removing ourselves from the food chain, we have all the time in the world for self reflection. Unfortunately, humans seem more concerned with other people's problems than our own. We see them acting on primitive thinking and seek to know why.

We humans really despise our natural ancestors and do all we can to appear civilized. Anything to avoid the obvious mistakes they made. Of course we are shocked to discover we are just as capable of making terrible errors as the hunter-gatherer groups we came from.

I think this era of the internet has made me realize just how new of a technology it is. The internet is now a curiosity for more than just geeks, technologists and academics and it seems as where out in society, we have the opportunity to present ourselves and process the formalities of civilized behavior, on the internet, there is a restricted quality to it which seems to make a lot of people act on Id to reference Freud, or rather impulses and lash out in some subconscious ways. There are many parallels I draw between "cancel culture" and events like The Salem Witch Trials or Book Burnings.