If our brains were big enough to truly define A, then I’d buy it. Unfortunately, A is short for 50,000 variables for each of the 6 billion people on this planet changing every second. The idea that you can extract absoulte universal truth from any situation vastly overestimates your intellect.

I’m a libertarian because I don’t think I’m smart enough to figure it out for everyone else.

http://cnreviews.com/life/news-issues/jackie-chan-chinese-control_20090420.html

I’m not sure what Chan said is much better than what he was reported as saying, but I’m far less sure of just what it is he actually said now.

Bull shit. A is A.

Great statement. I realized long ago that most people aren’t ready for the kind of freedom libertarians want. People called me all kinds of bad names for saying that.

As a libertarian, freedom of choice is what I want. But, not everyone can be free. It is as much a battle as everything else in life (like earning a living). You can’t “socialize” freedom very well…maybe that’s the problem in the USA. I believe it has nothing to do with moral relativism. Much more to do with Tao (IMHO).

All morals are relative unless you believe a beaded man threw his laws down upon the masses.

That is incorrect. You don’t have to believe in received knowledge to believe that application of reason leads to objective moral truths. Your statement is logically false.

Your argument seems to be that because we make assumptions, those assumptions cannot be right. That is an obvious logical error (an assumption can be right; it’s just not proven).

Moral relativism is simply the claim that there is no objective morality. If that is so, then there is no argument for libertarianism and no argument to, say, refrain from murder. If there are no objective morals, then by definition we cannot make a moral claim.

What good does it do to attack someone’s assumptions if there is no objective morality? The only basis to attack a proposition is to show that it is false. If the central claim of moral relativism is true, then no moral claim is falsifiable, so someone’s assumptions about morality are unassailable.

If your attack is to say “I disagree,” then you are wasting everyone’s time. If your attack is to say, this assumption is better than yours because the consequences are better, then you are making a moral (consequentialist) claim. If your attack is to say, this assumption is better than yours,” because yours permits bad acts, then you are making a moral (deontological) claim. That you think there are “better morals” than any other morals shows that you personally reject moral relativism.

Relativism is not an answer to anything. Relativism, much like the claim, “because God said so (or wills it),” is an END to a discussion, not a beginning. It is a weak, watery cop-out and demonstrates an unwillingness to struggle with tough questions.

Perhaps he’s subconsciously projecting those bitter times?

I just want to register my disagreement with Omar’s moral relativism.

All morals are relative unless you believe a beaded man threw his laws down upon the masses.

All other philosophies are derived from assumptions. Like math, if you alter your starting assumptions, your conclusions will be wildly different. Unlike math, we are crazy people with strange desires we don’t understand, so any assumption (“all men are created equal”, “the rich earn their money off the backs of the poor”, “it’s ok to kill people for your country”, “drugs are bad, mmmkay”, etc) is just an “accurate as we can be” model we develop in our heads. The universe doesn’t give a flying flip about “equal men” any more than it does a meteor flying through space.

We came from an amoral world, and as humans, we have been trying to find the better morals than “hit you on the head so I get what I want”. People didn’t really figure out libertarianism until ~200 years ago. “Freedom” is sure as hell not the “natural state of man”. It shouldn’t be surprising some people don’t share our philosophy.

So yea, moral relativism is probably a more accurate model of how the world works. If you want to change minds, attack the assumptions people work from, not their morality as if it’s intrinsic to the universe.

I’m not excusing crime and oppression, only noting crime and oppression are constructs invented by man, declared evil by our assumptions. Those concepts change with time, and man will eternally find the concepts up for debate. It’s naive to think we have it all figured out.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5705518582839508545&ei=f7_wSZmcA4rIrgKSm63tCg&q=bruce+lee+philosophy&hl=en

But, still, I’m totally hoping I can add Chan on twitter. Woot!

“We know these things happen, we talk about them, and occasionally do something about it.”

Do we know the Chinese don’t know those things happen, or don’t talk about them? They don’t talk about them in public venues, for very obvious reasons, but I suspect most of them know that stuff happens and some of them talk about it in private. Of course, I don’t actually know.

As for doing something about it, I hate to break it to you, but we don’t really do anything about that stuff either, for the exact same reason the Chinese don’t. Being a martyr sucks.

Oh sure, we get agitated and complain when people are arrested without cause. The state sometimes graciously allows victims of government theft to get their stuff back (after spending a bunch of time and a small fortune in court costs/lawyer fees). We get indignant that some people get strip searched without cause and write a few letters. We beg our masters to pretty please be nicer to us. Occasionally, a cause is picked up by the media, and the specific case is made right. But never, ever, the general case.

The only effective resisting that’s going on in those four categories listed is in the first one, with open source encryption becoming more common. That’s got a long way to go, and honestly, if it ever becomes common enough, it’ll be illegal, and doors will start getting busted in for sending encrypted e-mail to grandma.

No, we’re not going to see any real changes until the shit hits the fan, because until then, the cost of effectively resisting (or much more likely, ineffectively resisting), is your life, whether it be by simply ruining it, or with a few bullets in the chest.

I know Mike. I was just on roll and having fun.

What is scary is that while the Chinese government is well known for covering up their oppression, censoring information and filtering dissent as a means keeping their boot on the population, our government does not.

My meaning is, it is not about exposure or transparency. We are doing it right out in the open. Everyone behind it has been caught red handed. But that doesn’t stop it.

I think back to Watergate. Slightly before my time, but here was a case where, once it was exposed it was shut down. The American freedom of the press in action. Nowadays, we catch them all the time. And they just smile and say, “We decided that’s legal now.” and the Supreme court smiles and says “And we agree.” They are not worried about ‘being found out’ anymore.

So then what can we do? All of our open dialog doesn’t matter when they do it anyway

People are too stupid to be free…

Believing in authority is believing that some people should have the right, or the ability, to tell some other people to obey or die. Believing in freedom is not believing that.

They are in no way morally equivalent preferences, or values.

Now, the Chinese environment (and the US one too, to a silghtly lesser degree) trains people to believe in authority rather than freedom. That makes the popular belief in authority understandable, but it doesn’t make it right.