Comments by "LancesArmorStriking" (@LancesArmorStriking) on "Rationality Rules" channel.

@jamaalrichardson7437 Could you explain how, exactly, someone can be religious in their anti-religion? (I am referring to religious in the original sense, not "devotedly" or "consistently"). 'Serving as a foil to God' doesn't really say much about the actual stated (and these are, unless Peterson is actually a mind-reader, real) beliefs about the existence of God. I'm just not seeing what evidence there is besides conjecture that acknowledging the presence of, and damage done by, people believing in a thing proves that thing to actually, truly exist. Do we say the same of critics of pagan religions? Where do you draw the line, and why?
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Don't use heuristics. His attitude has nothing to do with the validity of his arguments- in real world situations, you'd be wise to jump to that conclusion, but because statistically, that can't always be true, we have to disregard it.
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@griz063 They might superficially, but in the absence of religion they would still manifest in some other way. They're tied to our instincts (infants have a sense of right and wrong, this has been demonstrated and repeated many times) and so religion was just the expression of that biological moral compass. In its absence, we'd still have the compass, just no scripture to 'guide' it.
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Actually, there is some very new research suggesting that autism-like symptoms can be caused by an imbalance in the gut microbiome, specifically an abundance of the Clostridia bacterial strain. Antibiotics (ironically, the opposite of a virus) are primarily to blame, but more research is needed.
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@DaveElectric For fuck's sake. I was explaining the difference between a libertarian and biological definition of free will. Why do people in these 'intellectual circles' think someone has to be critiquing their position?
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@Nivexity Sure- in his debate with Dillahunty, he says that atheists believe in God- that they might think they don't, but because they have morals and don't go around killing people like Dostoyevsky's storybook characters (yes, he actually went on to say this) they're "subconsciously" theists.
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@annofan-jz7dq And companies are guilty of the same crimes. Just recently Volkswagen was reprimanded for spewing more fumes into the atmosphere than they had reported; lying about their emissions. The British East India Company, not Britain, colonized India and killed millions. It was run according to a corporate structure. Monsanto and Tyson developed Agent Orange. Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers crashed the world economy.
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Austin Martín Hernández Nope. Economics 101 will teach you about products with inelastic demand. When companies get the chance, they monopolize their industry, or turn into an oligarchical cartel. Case in point, AT&T, Comcast, Charter, and Time Warner have spent millions snuffing out efforts to create local, mesh-based Internet connections. They're significantly cheaper (because these companies overcharge— what competition? They just sue or bury the local ordinance in legal fees and paperwork), yet there are few of them in the U.S., despite high demand. The free market doesn't work. It's a concept— good in theory, not in practice. Let's not forget Martin Shkreli shooting insulin prices through the roof, to $800+. People can't just shop around for a substance that literally keeps them alive, especially if they're poor. The free market doesn't work.
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Two words: big words.
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Not "ought to be good", just "ought to be". Basically, whatever you think should be, whether or not it is "good". In contrast to what you think "is" (objectively? Nothing is ever in a vacuum, but whatever.)
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"Valuing" truth doesn't mean always telling it, or always choosing it.
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The Truth of the Matter Can't tell if he was a troll or not
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@theawecabinet Believing that what you believe is true doesn't demonstrate UPB. It's just the common sense idea that believing something while also not believing it is definitionally impossible. And if UPB isn't a concrete set of behaviors, then why even bring it up? If its sole purpose is to assert that it exists, then it, having been mentioned by somebody, has already fulfilled its definition. It's the alt-right equivalent of "This is a sentence." It has no bearing and no practical application if it does not actually apply to the thing it describes- behavior(s) that are "universally" (he really should put that in context) preferred. If none of these can be evidenced, then it is simply wrong. Again, if the only facet of UPB is the claim that 'everybody believes that what they believe is true' is the full extent of UPB, then it's not even worth discussing. I could just as easily replace UPB with 'arguing.' Arguing against arguing is arguing for arguing. Case in point, a premise cannot be self-defeating. Am I molyneux now??
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@DaveElectric No, there is, but it's a matter of semantics. "Will" here is defined as the surface-level ability to do things which you want. In short, libertarianism's free will criteria is only concerned with whether you're enslaved or imposed upon by another person or institution. It says nothing of biological behaviors, or what defines what you "want", or whether your actions are predictable. We're not discussing cause and effect in this case, just imposition of human power.
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@placeholdernameisplacehold7671 That's just semantics, and easily counterable. You know what they mean. "Small-town, rugged businesses— no gubmit!!" (at least that's the sentiment in the U.S.). Meet them on their terms, and then destroy their world.
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@scrotiemcb5858 I can understand the sentiment, but if after 2,000 years we haven't teased out what's beneficial about the religion, is it really beneficial to keep around? How much more damage does it have to do before we "discover" something about it as an insight into our nature or a value (like compassion for others? Seems well established to me), before we decide that the deaths, the hindering of science, is too much to bear? I also suspect that religion won't simply 'die', that because it's built into us biologically to abstract agency and higher power, it'll just take a new form. I think celebrity and sports already do that well. But I do acknowledge that the lessons in religion are from a time in history that few people have anymore, and that 'seeing' the world when it was simpler may be passing down an appreciation of how far we've come. Frankly who knows. I'm just excited to see what happens.
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@WSTL1 That's all true, but because he does my hold any political power, he's relatively harmless; useful even. Destroying the more extreme elements of the alt right.
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Fantastic argument! I just wanted say that your last line was really funny, ту сказал, «Я Росся»!
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@brendanrichards3159 Sounds like an ad hominem to me. I don't know about his arguments, but you're not making a good case for your own intelligence by saying that, either.
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@brendanrichards3159 No, you said he was "a horrible, horrible person, dishonest, vicious and cowardly." You can certainly make an argument based on dishonesty, even cowardice, but viciousness and being horrible? Those are terms with no concrete parameters. Those are subjective terms. That was an attack on his character, not his arguments. Even if I were to discount that, you didn't state that "Aaron Rainbolt said something dishonest". You said that he was a dishonest person. You clarified when I asked, but your original statement was, by definition, a description of his character, and not his claims. Def: (of an argument or reaction) directed against a person rather than the position they are maintaining. That is what you did. You used an ad hominem. Just own up to it, I'm not a jury. Please.
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@brendanrichards3159 Huh, it seems you're right, I apologize! Every source I had ever seen did not specify that the insult had a prerequisite of being done specifically to refute an argument. That being said, you still committed a fallacy- if you're going to disagree with him, don't post an insult. That's dangerously close to, if not outright, Poisoning the well.
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@brendanrichards3159 Thank you for the correction, although I couldn't have known your intention when insulting, so I couldn't have distinguished between that fallacy and, as you said, just an insult. I'm also curious why exactly you think he's cowardly, horrible, and vicious (the first and third seem especially rare in tandem, so I suspect some emotional, rather than logical, reason for your words). Care to share?
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@brendanrichards3159 I assure you, Dr. Freud, I'm perfectly fine! In all seriousness, please refrain from practising keyboard psychology, it's not a good look. I'm not getting where you see some 'determination' from me- replying to comments doesn't always have an emotional motivation. It is, for most people including myself, a way to pass the time. I also fail to realize where I'm engaging in bad-faith debate here- unless you think any questioning is trolling or attack (sealioning)? Hopefully not. As for your comment: -Again, cowardice and viciousness aren't easily quantifiable, so I don't think you'd even find a paper attempting to find incidence of both traits in people. So I agree, but I don't think we could even go through with your hypothetical. -I said the two were rare because viciousness (tends to, if we're talking about YouTube videos) require an aggressive, almost violent stance against another person. Like, cussing them out in a video. Which is something a cowardly person is unlikely to do. Viciousness is generally identified through certain actions; cowardice is the lack of (confrontational) action. -I'm genuinely just curious. I didn't know that EoT deleted dissenting comments from popular YouTubers on his videos (I'm assuming that's what you meant), that's why I went through this thread. That's very saddening to hear, though I still don't take it as an argument against his points, and because you didn't use an ad hominem, I take it you don't, either.
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@JackgarPrime Glad to see a fellow viewer here! It also reminds me of the 'Trump or Dictator? quote' thing that circulated a few years ago, wish I could remember the name.. Jimmy Kimmel? Maybe. Either way, good strategy, I agree
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@achelouss1717 I would argue that, within the context of our world (not some abstracted playing field), he most definitely can be proven not to exist. To start, anybody who asserts God/ a god's supernatural abilities/properties has no skin in the game, as the concept of something superseding the natural defies any human attempt to observe, and consequently, prove (or disprove) it. Come to think of it, that's a defining feature of the vast majority of deities, so I could just say that I rest my case, but... Evidence for any specific God is faulty when you're reading religious texts. (You could argue that they're allegorical or guidelines, but at that point there's no reason to cherrypick the existence of a God as true when the Creation story isn't.) Abrahamic: Creation story is clearly of Mesopotamian or Egyptian origin; archaeological evidence for a regional flood (not to mention the complete infeasibility of a 600 year old man capturing 2 of every kind of animal alive and bringing them all onto a seaworthy vessel); a huge chunk of Jesus' life completely absent from Scripture, little to no evidence for written accounts at the time of occurrence; apocalypse story defies the laws of physics; Contradictory Quranic verses; clear adhesion to cultural norms rather than universal truths (which is an unprovable concept on its own). Dharmic: Historical documentation of the development of religious doctrine, i.e. incorporation of foreign gods into the vernacular religion; literally too many gods to count with overlapping duties/abilities; speaks poignant truths about human nature, but neuroscience has shown beyond any reasonable doubt that consciousness is kept in our heads and leaves us when we die, i.e. no reincarnation.
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@d.l.7416 Careful, you're venturing into Jordan Peterson territory with that kind of vocabulary (i.e. what the hell do you mean by 'misrepresent?', when an argument against a claim has nothing to do with personal character).
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@superduperfreakyDj Which it won't. The need for a "god" is an evolutionary instinct and will manifest itself into much less harmful forms of allowed to do so in modern society. Sports is a great example.
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@isodoublet I don't believe in determinism or predeterminism, at least from a pragmatic point of view, but quantum mechanics only applies to the nano-scale. The possibility of something tunneling through another object, our observation of a particle collapsing the Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, and retroactive time, all only work when the idea of probability starts to break down. On a larger scale, where the probability of larger particles (or arrangements of them— you, for example) would do the same thing, are brought down to basically zero. Not trying to argue, but to definitively prove free will, we need to find the area of the brain that controls it.
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@paulwettstein7071 In the context of law, it's actually quite harmful. How can we, given out tendency for justice, put people away knowing that they never had any choice to begin with? How is law, or anything else in our society, supposed to work without the presuposition of agency and responsibility?
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