Accept Islamic Terror As The New Normal?

[PierzStyx]

The discussion regarding who to side with (Greeks vs. Turks, Islam vs. West, Mormons vs. Missourians) isn't strictly a moral or logical question. It's not about morality nor logic. It's not even about "optimism for mankind." It's about in-group vs. out-group preference. Which is just a biological / temperament thing.

Take Pierz. He has extremely low in-group preference, to the extent of probably actually preferring the out-group in many/most situations! That is unbelievably extreme, and probably not evolutionarily viable. Yet, here he is! But let's say there was an invading species from a distant alien world that showed up. They didn't kill anyone or commit any aggression whatsoever, they just came down and started reproducing like crazy. They're a sapient fungus and can do so at a prodigious exponential rate, limited only by space and nutrients. They soon blanket the ocean entirely (they're just homesteading it! Fair and square!) and are spreading over the land at about 10,000 square miles a month and accelerating. Human crops are incompatible with the Space Mushrooms. In such a situation, I will bet that even someone as strongly pro-out-group as Pierz will take the narrow, tribal, bigoted view and prefer that humanity take up flamethrowers and exterminate them from off the planet, by any means necessary. Maybe we can keep one under glass somewhere, for science.

When Ender blew up the Buggers, even the leftists cheered.

When you have to resort to scifi monster to make your point then it should be evidence you have no point worth making. In case you missed it, we are talking about people- other human beings- not scifi monsters. While I know you love scifi/fantasy, made obvious by your pseudo-scientific explanations appeals to racial biology, I prefer talking about the real world. And while you might want to use scifi to try and justify what sounds like a massive genocide of minorities, in reality all of us are human beings with inalienable rights. Honestly, your little explanation sounds exactly like something those who massacred the Greeks as RJB describes would use to justify their actions.

Oh, and you really should read the Ender series. He lived in a fascist society. So of course the Leftists cheered. They had their utopia.

Also, every book after the first one is all about how Ender was wrong to kill the Formics.

[PierzStyx]

Yesterday I wanted to focus on the lying accusation. I think I established the fact that I didn't lie about the Greek Genocide. Now let's discuss what is a reasonable assumption on my part and what is blowback.


Usually when I think of blow back I think of cause and effect usually immediate and based on the passion for revenge. Example: A Syrian's family is murdered by bombs and he kills many in London. Classically we think of our meddling in Iran in the 1950s and the deposing of the Shah in the 1970s. That is a direct reaction.

What blow back isn't would be: The US governments destablizing the Middle East is not blow back for the Greek Genocide. It is pure evil on the part of the MIC. It's not for our safety and it isn't even for revenge. It's for power and money.

The Greek genocide was not blowback. They had been conquered 500 years prior and had lived on Asia Minor for 3000 years (if they were invited the invitations had disappeared over the years.) The genocide was pure evil. It wasn't even revenge.

The way I read what you wrote it would have been similar to if the Mormon population of Utah was reduced from 2.9 million to 2.9 thousand in less than a century due to mass murder and forced exile. I would call that one of the most atrocious of evils. I would not call it blowback from the Mountain Meadows Massacre, nor would I ask if they were invited there by the Native Americans or the Spanish/Mexicans less than 200 years ago. For me to say it was blowback, I would consider untrue and disrespectful.

That's my outlook. I hope my explanation sounds a little more reasonable.

The issue is one of confusion. You came into a discussion where TER was painting all of Islam as being demonic and evil. I responded by pointing out that the Byzantine Empire had just as long a history of violence and brutality as Muslims do. I specifically talked about Byzantine's invasions and then the spread of Islam and native revolts. Then the time periods got mixed up. When someone starts talking about the "Greek genocide" when I'm talking about the 1400s, what am I to think is meant? Errors in communication were made, misunderstanding proliferated.

[TER]

The issue is one of confusion. You came into a discussion where TER was painting all of Islam as being demonic and evil. I responded by pointing out that the Byzantine Empire had just as long a history of violence and brutality as Muslims do. I specifically talked about Byzantine's invasions and then the spread of Islam and native revolts. Then the time periods got mixed up. When someone starts talking about the "Greek genocide" when I'm talking about the 1400s, what am I to think is meant? Errors in communication were made, misunderstanding proliferated.

Hi Peirz, please don't put words in my mouth.

I didn't say all of Islam is demonic and evil.

I didn't say all Muslims are demonic and evil.

I said Mohammed was under a delusion by a demon to write the satanic verses he did which is a great cause for the evil which is found in Islam. Similar to how Joseph Smith was under a demonic influence to write the satanic verses he did.

That, or they both are con artists. Either way, not any prophet from God.

[Sola_Fide]

Hi Peirz, please don't put words in my mouth.

I didn't say all of Islam is demonic and evil.

I didn't say all Muslims are demonic and evil.

I said Mohammed was under a delusion by a demon to write the satanic verses he did which is a great cause for the evil which is found in Islam. Similar to how Joseph Smith was under a demonic influence to write the satanic verses he did.

That, or they both are con artists. Either way, not any prophet from God.

I'll say it. All of Islam is satanic.

But of course, other religions are too, many that call themselves "Christian".

[PierzStyx]

Says the middle school history teacher who had to google Charlemagne's reliquary. Population decimation constitutes a horror. From millions and millions down to a Rome of ~30,000. The cities were left empty to crumble and burn. Endless miles of formerly fertile fields became fever-infested swamps.

A huge percentage of ancient writings were lost forever. Forever. Brilliant, original thoughts which may never come again into the mind of man. Masterpieces of architecture used as quarries (mined for raw material). Libraries burned. Legendary sculpture and other art: wantonly destroyed. Gone forever.

The Romans had indoor plumbing. In fact, they had indoor hot water! Restaurants. Luxury. Mechanical computers. All kinds of technology. Go walk the streets of Pompeii. They had the good life. Another few hundred years of Roman innovation and we may have had Romans on the Moon!

The Renaissance is not a misnomer. It truly was a resurrection of a higher, more advanced civilizational spirit. Those great and noble Renaissance men re-discovered the archaics' greatness -- far, far beyond anything that had happened since -- and endeavored to reach those lofty planes themselves. Luckily, providentially, enough records had been preserved, just traces here and there, to give them tantalizing hints.

Historians' problem with the "Dark Age" in popular imagination is that supposedly the entire period, from 486 to 1400, was just a dark, empty, uninteresting age where nothing happened and everything was bad. Not quite true! But you are taking it to the opposite extreme and trying to pretend that the collapse of the Roman Empire was not, at the time, a real, honest, no-fooling disaster. "Enh, Rome, no loss. Bunch of statists."

You want to reduce all of history to one big proof-text of your ideological convictions. But actually, turns out: it's complicated! Which makes it interesting.

Oooh, scary ad hominem burn there. You really got me. Except for pretty much everything you claimed. But, by all means, continue to make an ass of yourself.

There was certainly a decline in material culture, in parts of Europe. But for most of Europe life continued on as it had for the centuries before. This is especially true for places like Italy and North Africa. The Germanic Kingdom of Italy replaced the Roman government and not just functioned better than the Roman government had in the last 200 years but even gained the blessing of the Eastern Empire in doing so. North Africa did well under the Visigoths but really grew when the Muslims showed up. Similarly so with Spain.

Even the shrinking of cities proves to mean little as evidence of a "Dark Age." Constantinople, the richest most vibrant city in Europe shrunk by 40% when the Plague of Justinian (which looks like it was the bubonic plague) struck in 541 AD. It would go on to kill a quarter of the entire population in Eastern Europe, crippling the economy and leading even to a huge drop off in farm production. One of the big results was people fleeing the cities for the countryside. And that was a single plague in a few years. It is no wonder we see shrinking populations and cities being abandoned in this era. Of course it didn't change much as the Roman villa had more or less been the center of life during the Roman era and continued to be so during this time as well. The development of the manorial system was really a continuance of what already had been.

And all of this is to say nothing of the extremely Anglophilic and Francophilic history you have to tell in order to conjure up a Dark Age. Once you stop focusing on them and look at pretty much all the rest of Europe you'll see that civilization continues onward, in an unbroken chain, for at least another 1,000 years. The focus merely swung from Rome to Constantinople.

And, on the whole, even for those who experienced a decline in material culture, it was more like going from today to 1910. Certainly it would hurt. But it would hardly be the end of civilization.

I will admit one caveat to this: Britain. But the reality in Britain that what most called a Dark Age was really just how Britain was, even with the Romans there. But even that story begins to ring false when you learn about Ireland.

Also, you're understanding of the Renaissance is both common and erroneous. No one rediscovered anything. Rather, through both trade and conquest Western Europe began to process and digest the advances in physics, astronomy, chemistry, and medicine that had been made in the Muslim world. Muslims didn't just transmit the ancient Greek texts, they corrected them in their many errors and then passed those corrected forms on to Europe. The discoveries of Muslims, such as al-Tusi's couplet which is pivotal to Copernicus's heliocentric theory, were part of the essential foundation of European advancement. The foundation of the European Renaissance (really more of the European Naissance) was Islamic science and discoveries. They didn't rediscover anything, Europeans discovered real science and medicine from the Muslims who had developed them.

Here is a simple article to start with: http://www.medievalhistory.net/scientia.htm

This documentary can give you an even greater in depth look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zs3y-jpY4eI

And this book, Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance, was one I had as a text in college. It is really dense and a bit dry, but if you're looking for greater knowledge with a lot of sources (it is a veryacademic work) can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Islamic-Scien...ct_top?ie=UTF8


Over all, you're absolutely right that history is complex. It is in fact far more complex than fits your simplistic story. Which is what made your last accusation, "You want to reduce all of history to one big proof-text of your ideological convictions. But actually, turns out: it's complicated!" all the more ironic. Tell me, after all the stones you've been throwing, do you have any walls left in your glass house? Oh, don't bother replying. I already know the answer; no you don't.

[PierzStyx]

Hi Peirz, please don't put words in my mouth.

I didn't say all of Islam is demonic and evil.

I didn't say all Muslims are demonic and evil.

I said Mohammed was under a delusion by a demon to write the satanic verses he did which is a great cause for the evil which is found in Islam. Similar to how Joseph Smith was under a demonic influence to write the satanic verses he did.

That, or they both are con artists. Either way, not any prophet from God.

You literally said Islam is a "religion based on satanic deception" called Muslims "murderous barbarians which kill and maime in the name of Allah in imitation of their pedophile, demon possessed evil 'prophet'." (Post #11)

I don't have to put words in your mouth. You're the one who is painting all Muslims as evil. And you can't even claim to be talking about past Muslims as you specifically mention news occurring in modern Middle Eastern nations the line before the second quoted section.

[TER]

You literally said Islam is a "religion based on satanic deception" called Muslims "murderous barbarians which kill and maime in the name of Allah in imitation of their pedophile, demon possessed evil 'prophet'." (Post #11)

I don't have to put words in your mouth. You're the one who is painting all Muslims as evil. And you can't even claim to be talking about past Muslims as you specifically mention news occurring in modern Middle Eastern nations the line before the second quoted section.

Islam is based on a lie. It does have some pious and honorable parts to it. Unfortunally, it is still based on a lie and its results are apparent in the television screens every other week. Anyone who screams "God is great!" while killings innocents is demonic.

As for the murderous barbarous part you quoted, that was referencing those terroists in Islam who think they are martyrs but are not martyrs like the Christian saints, but rather evil deluded barbarians. I wasn't applying it to all Muslims. Thought that was obvious.

I find most Muslims I meet to be very nice people. One of my best friends is Muslim and was in my bridal party. Nevertheless, Islam is based on a lie and one only needs to look at its 'prophet', its holy book, and those they consider to be Saints to know it is has evil ideologies mixed in with the good parts.

[helmuth_hubener]

When you have to resort to sci-fi monsters to make your point then I have to criticize and pretend to not like sci-fi, so stop it. In case you missed it, we are talking about people- other human beings- not sci-fi monsters.

See, even you are calling them monsters, exactly as I predicted. But what did they do that was so monstrous?

Answer: Zip! Nothing! They are the most perfect libertarians ever! They even meet your pacifist moral standard. They not only never, ever beat anybody up, they don't even have the arms with which to do it!

And yet, you call them "monsters." Why?

Because everybody's in-group has limits.

human beings with inalienable rights

What gives us those inalienable rights? Our sapience, yes? Our spirits, if you prefer? Anyway, something about our nature. The very same nature that the sapient fungi possess. Space Mushrooms are people, too! They have free will and advanced cognition -- their IQs average 125. Average! You can't say that it's OK to kill a Space Mushroom but not a Down's Syndrome human. Sorry!

While I know you love sci-fi/fantasy, made obvious by your pseudo-scientific explanations and appeals to racial biology

Oh? Which appeals are those?

Oh, and you really should read the Ender series.

Oh, I have. All of it. I love sci-fi, remember? (You, of course, hate sci-fi and have nothing but contempt for it. You never touch the stuff.)


~~~


Here's the interesting thought, for those of us with Mushroom-level cognition who actually like interesting thoughts:

And while you might want to use scifi to try and justify what sounds like a massive genocide of minorities, in reality all of us are human beings with inalienable rights. Honestly, your little explanation sounds exactly like something those who massacred the Greeks as RJB describes would use to justify their actions.

I don't know just whose side you think I'm on, the Mushrooms' or the flamethrowers', but since you are siding with the flamethrowers I will side with the mushrooms just to keep things interesting. Also, for moral consistency: if one is making any kind of attempt, even a even lame, dimwitted attempt, to have a consistent morality, it must come from first principles. It must have a sensible, firm, and rock-like foundation -- in contrast to being arbitrary, capricious, and/or incomprehensible.

What makes humans special is not our physiology. If a man loses his arm, no one questions whether he still qualifies as a man and has rights (if one believes in rights). What makes us special is our minds. If a baby is born without a brain, or a man is mentally retarded to a sufficient extreme, then people certainly do start to question if it still counts as a man. And certainly they don't even question whether he still has the rights of a man -- no one affords him such rights, nor proposes to. Instead, the retard is given the rights-status of a child, more or less. And the literally brainless child, even less -- literally just kill it at will. Most people would see it as an abomination, not as human.

If space mushrooms have minds, then the same moral principles apply to them and we have the same moral obligations to them as to any other mind-possessors.

Now, as for genociding the Greeks or the mushrooms or the Tibetans or the Europeans whomever it is you may want to genocide: does the method matter? Is our morality allowed to look at the results of its proscriptions? Because result-wise, consider this: a thousand years from now, in the year 3030, your non-existent descendants are not going to care whether you were murdered (violation of NAP! Bad!) or out-bred and pushed out and bred out (Carry on! Totally NAP-approved!). Bottom line will be that your genetic legacy, bequeathed to you by countless generations of ancestors who suffered and sacrificed their own short-term desires in order that you, a thousand years later, might live a better life in a better world, all of that went to pot; wasted effort; centuries down the drain; all those genes are dead. And gone. Gone, gone, gone. All that work is lost because Pierz couldn't be bothered to hit the "Save" button. Ctrl-S, man! Just hit that!

Anyway, enough personal advice. The Important Metaphysical Point is: time marches on. (On. On. On.) Maybe there was a crime 1,000 years ago. Whatever! Does anyone care 1,000 years later? Not really! Or maybe there wasn't a crime. Maybe the NAP was followed to the "T". Does anyone care about that 1,000 years later? Again not really! Sad but true. So you can quarrel and dicker about who killed who, but it doesn't matter and no one cares. Except for riling-up and ideological purposes, and even then somebody is around who cares only because whoever wiped out the victim -- whether through "murder" or through "peaceful immigration" -- didn't do a thorough job and left behind some survivors to belly-ache and plot revenge. All the genetic lines that have been wiped out completely? Nobody worries or talks about them. They're just gone.

Does it matter if the genocide was by literally killing 'em all or by a more slowly creeping death? The Chinese are genociding Tibet via mass-inundation -- flooding the region with ethnic Chinese. It's working. Tibet is probably already just a living memory. Is it evil? Depends if you're Chinese or Tibetan. Evil morally? You tell me.

What matters is the result in the end. Or, at least, that should matter somewhat! Maybe somewhat a lot! Because after 1,000 years, the result is all that is left. All the crimes, all the non-crimes, all the wrongs done, and all the rights, all tend to fade to black. What's left is one thing. One. The result. Nothing else matters. All the rest, it turns out, were implementation details.

As with a computer program, what you want is the result. If the result comes out wrong, could the code possibly be good?

[merkelstan]

[QUOTE=RJB;6479798The Turks raised the bar and held it until Nazism and then communism surpassed it.[/QUOTE]

Got your dates mixed-up

[RJB]

Got your dates mixed-up

This whole thread is mixed up. I just wanted out. Back to lurking for me.

[Ender]

When Ender blew up the Buggers, even the leftists cheered.

But it broke Ender's heart.

He then understood that everything he had been told was a lie and that the Buggers were not the evil they were portrayed to be. He spent his life restoring them and living Truth.

[pcosmar]

This whole thread is mixed up. I just wanted out. Back to lurking for me.

arguing over the best v worst form of authoritarianism.

like which bullet kills you deader ?

[helmuth_hubener]

But it broke Ender's heart.

He then understood that everything he had been told was a lie and that the Buggers were not the evil they were portrayed to be. He spent his life restoring them and living Truth.

Despite that, nobody knew how loving and cuddly and harmless the Buggers were at the time. So, was it really the wrong thing to do? Humanity survived. There's the result. They did not get wiped out. Is that a good thing? Well, again, it depends whether you're Tibetan or Chinese.

[Muwahid]

I find most Muslims I meet to be very nice people. One of my best friends is Muslim and was in my bridal party. Nevertheless, Islam is based on a lie and one only needs to look at its 'prophet', its holy book, and those they consider to be Saints to know it is has evil ideologies mixed in with the good parts.

Care to expand on that?

[RJB]

arguing over the best v worst form of authoritarianism.

like which bullet kills you deader ?

Ffs Pete. Why are you trying to pull me back in?

[Ender]

Despite that, nobody knew how loving and cuddly and harmless the Buggers were at the time. So, was it really the wrong thing to do? Humanity survived. There's the result. They did not get wiped out. Is that a good thing? Well, again, it depends whether you're Tibetan or Chinese.

Yes, because the child-killers were lied to. They were not told the truth about what they were doing by TPTB. Only because of Ender's broken heart and commitment did the Buggers survive.

What matters to ME is my relationship with God- if my species is lying and killing everything in sight based on greed, lies, and stupidity, I may have to take a stand.

[r3volution 3.0]

Is it really that big of a problem?! If you think it is, I think you're watching too much TV. On the list of things that might kill me, terrorism is WAY near the bottom.

Certainly, not worth the amount of attention paid to it. Definitely, not worth the wealth expended on it. By way of comparison, I'd be safer (and still have my liberties) if we removed all the sharks from the oceans. My odds of being killed by one of them suckers is higher than a terrorist.

In other words, boogiemen don't scare me - my own government does.

Sharkofascism is an existential threat.

Again, we are not discussing general risk, but a specific one and what solutions might be available.

Some risks are too small to justify the cost of reducing them.

Some strategies for eliminating risks actually increase them.

"Dey's scary, bomb stuff somewhere!" is not sensible risk-management.

Right...... that's why St Francis of Assisi was allowed in their tents and on their streets during the Crusades. Couldn't possibly be that he was a decent trustworthy human being that did not lie to them, amirite?

Muslims were always sworn to protect the "people of the book" and they did

Indeed, ISIS-type behavior was virtually non-existent; it's a product of the events of the past century.

So basically you all are saying if the west withdrew all troops from the Middle East by noon today, terrorism would go away?

When the US stops meddling in the Mid-East, and stable states emerge in the Mid-East, terrorists will stop being created.

When the existing ones then die off, that will be the end of it.

While it is probably true that deposing leaders (generally secular and mostly bad) opened the door to the escalation of radical Islam, the US did not cause the intial problem.

Britain caused the initial problem by dismantling the Ottoman Empire and creating a political vacuum.

The US is just taking that process to the next level and dismantling what semi-stable states have managed to emerge since WWI.

The history is what it is. This is not a 21st century problem, and it is not solely a US problem. It goes back centuries in Europe, Africa, and Central Asia.

Most wars are about material self-interest, not religion. The historical rivalry between the Christian and Muslims worlds was realpolitik, with religion being mostly a rationalization. Religious fanatics have existed, of course, but are the exception to the rule. If the Mid-East were Hindu or Mormon instead of Muslim, but with the same history of wars and destabilization, nothing would be significantly different.

You think it is an exaggerated threat because you don't live in Syria

Is the problem in Syria that Muslims rose up one day, out of the blue, and decided to start murdering infidels? No, the problem is that foreign powers financed a rebellion against the Syria government (a Muslim government, of course, which never did anything like what ISIS has been doing) and created total chaos, out of which emerged radical groups like ISIS.

The one where the Filipino government started an official Resettlement Policy that relocated Filipino Catholics into the area and settled them on territory already lived on by the Moro people who are Muslim. Then the Filipino government started massacring Moro people who dared protest the fact that their lands and homes were being taken and political power was being assumed by those the state had brought in to control the Moro people.The Moro Insurgency is rooted in a long history of resistance by the Bangsamoro people against foreign rule, dating back to the American annexation of the Philippines in 1898 even as they are not part of Spain's Act of War. Since then, Moro resistance has persisted against the Philippine government.

I thought a people trying to defend themselves and their families from an overweening tyrannical authoritarian central state would be more popular on a libertarian forum.

Well said. This comment then led to a debate about the morality of the Moro's guerilla war (esp. the targeting of civilians), but that's beside the point: namely, the reason they're doing bombings and so forth is not that they're Muslims hell bent on world domination, but because they're resisting violence perpetrated against them. Try forcibly repopulating East Texas with Muslims and you'll get similar results, except the guerillas' slogans will be Baptist instead of Sunni.

Any historian of note will tell you that the Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople in 1204 and they were driven out by 1261. The Ottomans didn't destroy Constantinople until 1453, almost 200 years later. While the Crusaders certainly didn't help Constantinople, they can hardly be blamed for its inability to repel invasion 200 years later.

It has no bearing on this thread, but I'd quibble with this.

The Fourth "Crusade" devastated the empire. It never recovered, territorially or otherwise.

I expect it would have fallen to the Ottomans anyway, but somewhat later.

Christianity predates Islam in Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Libya by centuries.

Are the Christians now forming armies to retake the land that the invaders took centuries ago? If they did, would it be justifiable blowback? The Crusaders made that claim. Is it okay for the Mora people but not the Christians?

BTW, I am not advocating such a thing be done. Want to state that before I am accused again of inciting violence.

Religious communities don't own land, individuals do. The Muslims "took" the land in the Mid-East mostly in the sense that they converted the existing inhabitants, as opposed to stealing their land and taking it for themselves. Now, if you can prove that an identifiable parcel of land in the Mid-East belongs to a living ancestor of its ancient, dispossessed owner, by all means he should have his property returned, by force if necessary. But it would never be justifiable to "take back" land in the Mid-East, in the sense of taking it from its legitimate owners because they don't belong to the right religion.

Christians didn't wipe out the Irish, the Slav, the Germans, etc. The Buddhists didn't wipe out and replace the Chinese, The Japanese, and the Koreans.

And Muslims from Arabia did not wipe out the various nationalities they conquered as they expanded their state. The Muslim world is Muslim because of conversion, not genocide and population replacement. If you don't believe me, a quick glance at photos of people from different Muslim countries today should demonstrate it plainly.

Where are the Greek speaking Christians who once populated Asia Minor?

The vast majority of them converted (were not murdered or exiled) as the Eastern Empire lost Anatolia. The few who remained in the 20th century were massacred by the first democratically elected Turkish government, after 500 years of toleration under the Ottoman Sultans (who not only tolerated them, but promoted them routinely to the highest ranks of the imperial government).

Historians' problem with the "Dark Age" in popular imagination is that supposedly the entire period, from 486 to 1400, was just a dark, empty, uninteresting age where nothing happened and everything was bad. Not quite true! But you are taking it to the opposite extreme and trying to pretend that the collapse of the Roman Empire was not, at the time, a real, honest, no-fooling disaster. "Enh, Rome, no loss. Bunch of statists."

The Late Eastern Empire wasn't a loss in many ways: the Ottomans governed with a much lighter hand. Large numbers of people/communities essentially deserted to the Turks because the taxes were lower, among other reasons. One can't help but regret the cultural loss, but from a practical perspective, it was an improvement. The Late Western Empire's collapse was another story: it was equally corrupt, but it didn't get replaced by a functioning conquerer-state, it got replaced by thousands of tiny statelets, all warring with each other in a chaos that lasted a couple hundred years (Dark Age).

[helmuth_hubener]

Yes, because the child-killers were lied to.

Which is more serious: killing or lying?

Could lying, like killing, be justified, and in fact righteous and called-for, in defense?

[Ender]

Which is more serious: killing or lying?

Could lying, like killing, be justified, and in fact righteous and called-for, in defense?

The kids didn't know the games were real- they thought it was a video game to help them become smarter in battle.

When you lie so that someone else kills for you, then YOU are essentially the killer.

And it wasn't defense, they were killing the Buggers at their own planet- sorta like the ME situation today.

[helmuth_hubener]

The kids didn't know the games were real- they thought it was a video game to help them become smarter in battle.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thanks for the recap. Try to keep up and don't be tedious. Nobody is accusing the deceived youth of moral crime. It is the adults who concern us.

You said that the reason defeating the Buggers in war was evil was "because the children were lied to." That seems, to me, like a weak reason, and I'm probably more opposed to lying than anyone you will ever meet. The whole war is evil because, and only because, one of the instrumentalities used was lying to children? Come on.

When you lie so that someone else kills for you, then YOU are essentially the killer.

Yes, absolutely. Not in dispute.

And it wasn't defense, they were killing the Buggers at their own planet- sorta like the ME situation today.

Earth was attacked first. The Buggers' attack was devastating and horrifying. Earth could have been wiped out completely. Sorry, no question. Defense.

Who hits first matters.

[helmuth_hubener]

Gone, gone, gone. All that work is lost because Pierz couldn't be bothered to hit the "Save" button. Ctrl-S, man! Just hit that!

Anyway, enough personal advice.

Can we ever have enough personal advice? Not really! Here's some of the technical details on how to achieve that Ctrl-S keychord.

http://www.socialmatter.net/2017/06/...-catch-a-wife/

So, whatcha waiting for? Jump in the fire!

[Ender]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thanks for the recap. Try to keep up and don't be tedious. Nobody is accusing the deceived youth of moral crime. It is the adults who concern us.

You said that the reason defeating the Buggers in war was evil was "because the children were lied to." That seems, to me, like a weak reason, and I'm probably more opposed to lying than anyone you will ever meet. The whole war is evil because, and only because, one of the instrumentalities used was lying to children? Come on.

Yes, absolutely. Not in dispute.

Earth was attacked first. The Buggers' attack was devastating and horrifying. Earth could have been wiped out completely. Sorry, no question. Defense.

Who hits first matters.

I'M being tedious- LOL- I suggest YOU keep up.

And the Buggers didn't know the earth was occupied by intelligent beings until after they hit.

[helmuth_hubener]

And the Buggers didn't know the earth was occupied by intelligent beings until after they hit.

You keep bringing up these tangentially-related (because they are at least plot elements from the same fantasy books) but ultimately-irrelevant-to-the-actual-discussion points. Your ego-protection circuit is trying to distract you, perhaps.

Your characterization is over-exaggerated -- I recall Card's explanation being that they assumed humans were like them, with only the queens being really sapient / free-willed / souled. So they assumed there was one queen for the whole planet, safely cocooned somewhere, and that she wouldn't really have any problem with them poking around experimentally and dissecting a few (or a few million) of her drones -- for science! Any more than they would.

Anyway, that whole paragraph is wholly beside the point (I couldn't help myself! I am, as Pierz accused, an inmate of the Scifi Sanitarium.). What the Buggers did or did not know is completely irrelevant, as far as I can tell, for the morality of retaliating against them. Humans, unlike Buggers, are not mind-readers! Even if they were, that would be irrelevant, too. What matters is *your own action itself*! What did you do? Everyone else's misunderstandings or motives or secret thoughts are just noise and distraction from clear moral thinking. Distraction as well from clear results-based thinking.

Humanity surviving is the desired result. That is undebatable and unequivocal, at all times and in all situations. That you equivocate it ("if my species is lying and killing everything in sight based on greed, lies, and stupidity, I may have to take a stand." Against them. As in, against your own species.) kinda-sorta makes your fitness to survive go into a gray zone. It makes it highly in question.

The species has to survive.

Any member of the species not wanting the species to survive is, well,.... questionable.

Most people will also want their close family to survive. They will prioritize the survival of that in-group very highly, above that of outsiders. Other people are more "meh."

Some people have a similar tribal preference for broader groupings that they belong to: their extended relations, their village, their ethnicity.

Some people even have still-broader in-groups: their country, their religious clan, and their race.

How much you prefer your in-group(s) will generally (you can change it, with conscious effort, or with ideological brainwashing) depend on how out-bred vs. in-bred you are. Long, multi-centuries campaigns of out-breeding seem to reduce in-group preference dramatically. The end products become more and more "cosmopolitan."

To the extent where, eventually, after many, many generations, you might have people siding against their own kin not only with foreign sub-species but with alien apocritae. You might. But probably not. It probably wouldn't get that far. You'd kill the Buggers, too, Ender.

[helmuth_hubener]

By the way, just to give you all whiplash, here's a book that makes Pierz' case (kind of! before he got it muddled up) much better, more eruditely, and more entertainingly than he ever could!

Middle Ages!
Imprisoning me
All that I see
Absolute Horror!

Since a certain someone on this thread has in the past whined that he would read a book, if only it didn't cost money, I will even put a link to accommodate his destitution:

[Ender]

You keep bringing up these tangentially-related (because they are at least plot elements from the same fantasy books) but ultimately-irrelevant-to-the-actual-discussion points. Your ego-protection circuit is trying to distract you, perhaps.

Your characterization is over-exaggerated -- I recall Card's explanation being that they assumed humans were like them, with only the queens being really sapient / free-willed / souled. So they assumed there was one queen for the whole planet, safely cocooned somewhere, and that she wouldn't really have any problem with them poking around experimentally and dissecting a few (or a few million) of her drones -- for science! Any more than they would.

Anyway, that whole paragraph is wholly beside the point (I couldn't help myself! I am, as Pierz accused, an inmate of the Scifi Sanitarium.). What the Buggers did or did not know is completely irrelevant, as far as I can tell, for the morality of retaliating against them. Humans, unlike Buggers, are not mind-readers! Even if they were, that would be irrelevant, too. What matters is *your own action itself*! What did you do? Everyone else's misunderstandings or motives or secret thoughts are just noise and distraction from clear moral thinking. Distraction as well from clear results-based thinking.

Humanity surviving is the desired result. That is undebatable and unequivocal, at all times and in all situations. That you equivocate it ("if my species is lying and killing everything in sight based on greed, lies, and stupidity, I may have to take a stand." Against them. As in, against your own species.) kinda-sorta makes your fitness to survive go into a gray zone. It makes it highly in question.

The species has to survive.

Any member of the species not wanting the species to survive is, well,.... questionable.

Most people will also want their close family to survive. They will prioritize the survival of that in-group very highly, above that of outsiders. Other people are more "meh."

Some people have a similar tribal preference for broader groupings that they belong to: their extended relations, their village, their ethnicity.

Some people even have still-broader in-groups: their country, their religious clan, and their race.

How much you prefer your in-group(s) will generally (you can change it, with conscious effort, or with ideological brainwashing) depend on how out-bred vs. in-bred one is. Long, multi-centuries campaigns of out-breeding seem to reduce in-group preference dramatically. The end products become more and more "cosmopolitan."

To the extent where, eventually, after many, many generations, you might have people siding against their own kin not only with foreign sub-species but with alien apocritae. You might. But probably not. It probably wouldn't get that far. You'd kill the Buggers, too, Ender. You'd kill 'em all.

Uh- that's a lotta hyperbole trying to say I'd kill something whether I was right or not. I will defend myself & my loved ones but I am NOT going to jump into someone else's battle because TPTB want me to and lie about what is really going on.

I would suggest you read the whole Ender's series and the Ender's Shadow books, as well.

[helmuth_hubener]

Uh- that's a lotta hyperbole trying to say I'd kill something whether I was right or not. ... TPTB want me to and lie about what is really going on.

So you always know whether you are right or not? And you always are able to successfully identify lies (and just mistakes) and reject them in favor of Truth and Perfection? I'm sure you didn't mean it this way, but taken at face value this seems to me like gross, delusional, holier-than-thou arrogance.

I will defend myself & my loved ones but I am NOT going to jump into someone else's battle because TPTB want me to and lie about what is really going on.

The entire planet -- and thus obviously not only your own woman and children but everyone's! -- is under clear and present threat and you are not going to stand up and defend her? That is called cowardice. Nothing more. Your morality is broken.

I would suggest you read the whole Ender's series

Did I not already say that I did? Yes, I did.

For everyone else's benefit: in the Ender's Game world, an alien species of sapient insects called Buggers has shown up all of a sudden and commenced wreaking havoc on the Earth, killing millions. Humanity tries to defend itself, naturally, through a massive defensive war which apparently (our, RPF's) Ender does not approve of. Due to some reckless heroism and luck they are able to fend off the attack and narrowly avoid what had seemed to be a quickly-progressing and unstoppable total annihilation.

Then, not waiting for the Buggers to try it again, the humans launch a counter-attack and are able to completely destroy the Bugger fleet. The remaining queen goes into hibernation. They're like bees, see, and the only truly conscious and sapient one is the queen -- all the drones are just extensions of her, like our arms and legs and fingernails. So, actually, no big loss for the Buggers! No one real dies when the humans wipe out billions or even trillions of drones. Thinning the swarm is like getting a haircut. And don't you worry: Ender brings the queen out of hibernation thousands of years later on distant Diversity Planet where he can prove that all alien species can live together in peace and multicultural harmony. Like Woodstock -- except with black people! (represented by talking pigs and enormous bugs)

One big leftist utopia.

In (our) Ender's interpretation (and, in fairness, in the author's as well) humanity is the Big Bad Bigoted Bad Guy in this tale. Excuse me if I no longer see it quite that cut-and-dry.

[helmuth_hubener]

In a situation where it's us or them, I choose us.

Sometimes you've got to stand up and fight for your people's survival.

The aliens are people, too. Yeah, I get it. Do I want this planet occupied by them instead of humans? No.

At some point, you have to have some preference for your own way of life, your own kind, your own people. And then you need to put that preference into action and fight to preserve their continuity. To refuse to fight is to be a coward. To not even have the preference, is to be a traitor.

[Ender]

In a situation where it's us or them, I choose us.

The aliens are people, too. Yeah, I get it. Do I want this planet occupied by them instead of humans? No.

At some point, you have to have some preference for your own way of life, your own kind, your own people. And then you need to put that preference into action and fight to preserve their continuity. To refuse to fight is to be a coward. To not even have the preference, is to be a traitor.

Bunchesa BS

How much of:

I will defend myself & my loved ones but I am NOT going to jump into someone else's battle because TPTB want me to and lie about what is really going on.


-do you NOT understand?

[helmuth_hubener]

Red Alert. Engage Repetitive Scream Mode. All neural circuits immediate shut down. Life-support only.

Communication channels have been terminated, Captain. Echo Chamber activated. Awaiting your orders.