Posts by Lanny

2015-07-26 at 8:48 AM UTC in The 2nd amendment

Lanny Bird of Courage

Right there, you just did it. Ok, you didn't say 'guns are bad' in those exact words, but if you don't trust the general public with guns, then I am willing to bet that you do not admire or approve of firearms

It's true I don't "admire" firearms, I think you'd have to be a little off kilter to admire any inanimate object. As I've said, I don't approve of private gun ownership but that's because they do more harm than good, I don't have an opposition to any intrinsic property of firearms. You still haven't told me why my "admission" of that or anything else weighs on whether or not you accept a given piece of evidence.

Ahhh, collectivism. I don't give a fuck about 'a net win for us', I care about having the ability and option to arm myself if I see fit.

Alright, you can do that I guess but if you're ideal political system is exclusively aimed as satisfying your personal desires then I don't see why you would expect anyone else to take it seriously. Like I could say "I don't care about collective good, I care about being tremendously wealthy without having to do anything for it" and form my politics around that but I wouldn't expect it to be particularly popular with anyone nor is it easy to conceive of a justification for that system over anyone else's "purely self-interested state".

A trained police officer isn't some superhero, it is just a guy, usually quite low on the intellectual scale. Criminals steal cops guns all the time, and even kill the cops with their own guns. It's such a problem, that police holsters are specially made to be resistant to being pulled from the holster by someone other than the officer. Criminals still get the guns even with the special holsters.

I never said police officers were superheros, but they are better equipped to retain their guns than the public at large. And this doesn't change the fact stealing guns from police officers is possible today as well, so I have no idea how this line of thinking is supposed to end at "therefore private gun ownership should be a thing". In a world without private gun ownership gun-thieves have far fewer potential targets, and their targets are typically better equipped to prevent the theft from happening.

2015-07-26 at 8:29 AM UTC in Psychomanthis should move to the united states

Lanny Bird of Courage

Are you saying we don't have massive cronyism? No, you wouldn't be that foolish. You seem to have this quasi-autistic thinking style that tends to be too narrow and inflexible. Of course our current system isn't 100% cronyism, clearly countries/states vary in their levels of corruption.

My point still stands though, if you want to deny the US as being representative of the outcomes of capitalism then you need to demonstrate that it's not a capitalism to a sufficient degree to excuse capitalism-as-concept. You think the US is non-representative of capitalistic systems so what would be a falsification condition for that? Put differently what evidence would you need to see in order to be convinced that systems like the US are representative of austrian school economics?

2015-07-26 at 6:42 AM UTC in Shitty Technical Jokes

Lanny Bird of Courage

lol, I like that. I once heard a similar joke, I don't really remember how it went so I can't deliver the punch line in a funny way but the gist was that Tom Knight (a famous lisp programmer) would write all his programs start to finishing without refactoring or changing them and at the end he would just lean on the right paren key for a few minutes.

2015-07-26 at 6:35 AM UTC in Who's more autistic. Malice or myself?

Lanny Bird of Courage

Remember when blunderstar was pretending to be a robot because he was upset about something? Good job bringing robotic back malice

2015-07-26 at 6:32 AM UTC in Psychomanthis should move to the united states

Lanny Bird of Courage

So when we see government favors happening it's evidence of cronyism and when we don't see government favors happening it's... still evidence for cronyism because it's just a measured effort to appease the populace? Sounds like an unfalsifiable hypothesis to me. What exactly would you consider evidence against the crony capitalism hypothesis?

2015-07-26 at 6:25 AM UTC in The 2nd amendment

Lanny Bird of Courage

Only if you admit that the issue of weapons ownership isn't as simple as 'Guns are Bad!'

When did I ever say "it's as simple as guns are bad"? I don't support the idea of private gun ownership, I've never suggested the issue is simple. Further why on earth would your decision to accept or reject evidence about gun ownership policy rest on what I do or don't "admit"?

Are you honestly saying that all guns should be banned from private ownership:?

Yes. Privately owned guns represent more societal harm than good, after weighing the value of guns as entertainment and the probable amount and severity of crime stopped by them against the rate of wrongful death and injury by firearm private ownership just doesn't seem to be a net win for us. Note the weight of good against harm here because it addresses most of the common objections by advocates of gun ownership, namely the "why don't you ban cars" argument (because they have a large social benefit) and the "but you can still kill people with lead pipes" (true, but it doesn't change the fact that the world without gun ownership seems to be more peaceful than the one with, even if murder still happens)

And of course, you want the cops and military to be armed….like, what is wrong with you? God, I will never understand leftism.

Many countries don't give firearms to their regular police, gun violence is dealt with by a highly trained swat-like team that's only called in when criminals are believed to have guns. I think that's a sane policy. It's ultimately necessary for law enforcement to have superior martial force in order to... enforce the law so yes, police should still have access to guns when they're strictly necessary, but I do think we'd benefit from less police shootings in the US.

An armed cop with an unarmed populace is an engraved invitation to steal the cops 'real' gun. All it takes is a simple ambush.

Wut? I mean sure I guess but you can steal a cops gun today if you really want to try. I think it's probably easier to steal guns from the general population than from a trained police officer.

lanny i have nothing to add to the discussion but can you plz stop typing like a redditor

Eww, how am I typing like a redditor?

2015-07-26 at 6:02 AM UTC in Fuck religion.

Lanny Bird of Courage

I'll write more arguments later but let me just adress your last one here. Force a moral necessity? Are you hearing yourself here?

Yes, why exactly is force be categorically impermissible other than that it's a central dogma of libertarianism? You shouldn't act as though this is some shocking fringe position, I'd be willing to venture that the vast majority of americans think that material force is morally necessary in at least some situations. Consider policy for things like intervention in foreign genocide (think about public response to the arab spring protests), these are policies that can gain broad support. If you don't believe it that's fine, but don't pretend like NAP is a self-evident unassailable truth, there for anyone to see.

While morality may be hard to define in an objecive manner ethics are not and it is certainly not ethical to do what you suggest. I suggest you read Universally Preferable Behavior: A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics by Molyneux.

Can you summarize Molyneux's argument? I heard renditions from people claiming to defend it but I'd be interested in your reading of the book.

So,if people are going to do stupid and harmful things no matter what, then there is no point in maintaining an unwieldy, expensive, and oppressive 'big government'.

How did you get that out of what I posted? I said that people, when left to their own devices, will almost all make suboptimal decisions. It's my position that a strong state can reduce the rate at which people make stupid and harmful decisions and that is why an effective strong state is justified.

If people don't need a cop looking over their shoulder every minute of the day, then ultimately they don't need cops at all.

How on earth does the latter follow from the former? "If people don't need to drink 30 gallons of water a day then they don't need water at all" if obviously not true, why is it suddenly a different story when we get to cops?

Coercing people to 'make the best possible decisions'…..how's that working out for us? Not well….

When it's the right decision, quite well. Compulsory education has been tremendously beneficial to society, playing a large part in our ability to organize ourselves in as large social structures as we do. Compare places without coercive law enforcement to those with. Certainly the criminal system in the US is not ideal but it's doing far better than places where vigilante "justice" is the law keeping force. Roads, public utilities, mandatory vaccination, dietary supplementation are among many examples of the populace being forced into making the right choice.

2015-07-26 at 1:46 AM UTC in The 2nd amendment

Lanny Bird of Courage

there is no 'for example', japan is a singular case.

What, exactly do you think an example is? If I could provide a few more examples of countries with strict gun control and low incidence of gun crime would you admit you're wrong?

I think that the whole 'reduction in crime rates' thing when firearms are restricted, is singularly due to niggers not being smart enough to make ad-hoc firearms, and if they can't readily get ahold of a real one, they just go back to chucking spears or whatever. Niggers are the group that is responsible for 99% of 'gun crime', all over the world.

Even it that was 100% true (and it's obviously not) we would still have a compelling case for banning private ownership of firearms.

2015-07-26 at 12:15 AM UTC in Fuck religion.

Lanny Bird of Courage

If what you said about the right's charity was true why do the republicans STATISTICALLY donate more to charity than the left?

Are you basing that on Brooks? His methodology was questionable and better studies since then don't substantiate his findings.

Also LMAO! Charity at the cost of economic suicide, oh god Lanny.

Yes, are you saying that in an austrian capitalistic system businesses which incur unnecessary costs won't eventually be overcome by their competition? Because that seems like a pretty big thing in your camp. If businesses can make suboptimal decisions and remain in business perpetually then I wonder why exactly you think that

First of all without government interference the economy would be over 9000 times stronger and could take 'a hit' like massive private charity.

(lol)

Also you seem to believe that most people in the world are absolutely incapabale of being their own economic agents in the sense that they can't take care of themselves. It is implied, since you said the charity would need to be so great it would be economic suicide. See lanny, the anarcho-capitalist system actually believes in people, and that they are able to make their own living in a free market environment.

yeah well... anarcho capitalists are wrong there. Left entirely to their own devices most people could probably survive, sure, but mere survival of its citizens is like the "not-a-genocidal-regime" criteria, hardly desirable. Look at all the dumb shit you see people do every day in the news or even just functional adults who do fairly minor yet obviously harmful things to themselves. You can't entrust everyone's well being to themselves because making good decisions requires intelligence and exactly half the population is of below average intelligence. Under the rule of a powerful state it's possible to have everyone make the best possible decision on every subject where the truth of the matter is known.

You see what i have a problem with is that the government, FORCES me to pay for people that are poor whether they be deserving or not. The notion of deserving comes from the fact if they make an effort to get their shit together or not if they do and they fail because of their own limitation i am happy to provide what economic aid i can to help a person out. But when the government gets involved and basically puts a gun to my head and is telling me YOU ARE PAYING FOR THE WELFARE STATE BECAUSE WE FUCKING SAY SO i take issue with that.

Yup, it's true you're forced to participate in, well, every sort of government. But participating in society is in your own interest, wether you think it is or not, so it's actually a moral necessity that you be forced to participate.

2015-07-25 at 11:43 PM UTC in The 2nd amendment

Lanny Bird of Courage

The constitution? Ain't nobody got time for that in America, especially politicians.

You're right, most people don't have time to treat a 200 year old document drafted by some ignorant motherfuckers like some kind of unquestionable source of divine truth, nor should they.

I posit that firearm ownership is more than just a fundamental right, because I can go out in my garage and make a zip gun anytime I want. If I had a lathe and some machine shop tools, I could make rifled barrels. You can't stop that. Ever.

Ban or restrict all guns,and I can go arm myself in a few hours. Then I will be a wolf among sheep.

Except this, empirically, is not the case. However easy you feel it is to manufacture firearms, it's clearly hard enough that banning private ownership will cause a significant drop in rates of gun crime. Look, for example, at Japan.

2015-07-25 at 8:55 PM UTC in Psychomanthis should move to the united states

Lanny Bird of Courage

Bank bail-outs. Point demonstrated.

Point not demonstrated. We can imagine reasons (such as reasons actually given) for the bank bailouts without resorting to cronyism yet your model of the US as a crony capitalism has a hard time explaining why telecom, despite it's tremendous resources, has failed to evade legislation that harms its interests.

China not so much these days but it was in the USSR, remember how Stalin thought it would be a great idea to impose collectivization, now that was awesome wasn't it. Millions of people died of famine or had to stand in lines for hours upon hours to get a stale loaf of bread.

What exactly are you basing that claim on?

I do readily agree that animals cognition and emotions are quite like ours.

so, why is it ok for a pack of wolves to take down and eat a caribou, but it is somehow reprehensible if I eat the flesh of a dead chicken, tenderized and coated in flour, egg, and bread crumbs and fried for four minutes on each side?

Because there's a difference between being a moral agent (having moral responsibilities) and being morally considerable (having some rights, being the subject of moral agents' duties). Adult humans are both agents and morally considerable but animals are only considerable. By analogy, if an infant acts or fails to act in a way that causes someone harm it wouldn't make sense to blame it, it couldn't have done otherwise and didn't understand the meaning of its actions, yet we still would consider it immoral to harm infants, despite them not having the same responsibilities as us. Wolves don't seem to have the mental capacity to understand right from wrong, it would make no sense to hold them to a moral standard, but that doesn't mean we don't have some obligation not to harm then unduly.

2015-07-25 at 4:47 PM UTC in Extorting Lanny

Lanny Bird of Courage

bleh, I'll see what I can do. Not hot on the idea of dropping the whole DB though.

2015-07-25 at 7:12 AM UTC in The retarded thread: Fuck, §m£ÂgØL made one first edition

Lanny Bird of Courage

anti-psychotics sounds scary

I don't do scary sounding drugs

2015-07-25 at 7:08 AM UTC in Sitting in an sensory deprivation tank during benzo withdrawal

Lanny Bird of Courage

sounds like a shit combo, I would think you could at least get something for the benzo withdrawal. Not sure what the medical protocol for amp withdrawals is but damn, seems like they should at least give your _something_ to ease you off that shit.

2015-07-25 at 7:04 AM UTC in The 2nd amendment

Lanny Bird of Courage

So one way you could approach it is to say that firearm ownership is not a fundamental right, you can opt for privacy or you can own guns. Consider that many research institutes need to surrender their "right to privacy" to obtain controlled materials and that policy is largely uncontroversial.

The real answer is that the left proper (not moderates who get called liberals because of the US's skewed political spectrum) doesn't give a shit about privacy, the significance of Roe v. Wade is not privacy rights, which was simply a popular cover that worked at the time, but the obvious issue of abortion. The supreme court makes efforts to maintain some semblance of continuity with historical courts but the reality is that the legal justifications seem to be largely post-hoc. It would be a deeply disturbing fact about the political balance of power if not for the fact that they've made consistently better decisions than any other branch of government since the new deal era.

2015-07-25 at 6:55 AM UTC in Sitting in an sensory deprivation tank during benzo withdrawal

Lanny Bird of Courage

Also benzo withdrawal is on my shortlist of experiences I hope to never have to go through. I know I couldn't tough it out, if I ever got addicted to benzos proper I'd just have to be on them for the rest of my life.

2015-07-25 at 6:54 AM UTC in Sitting in an sensory deprivation tank during benzo withdrawal

Lanny Bird of Courage

~~~ aint shit to do out here but smoke and drive (just smoke and drive) ~~~

2015-07-25 at 6:52 AM UTC in why is it legal

Lanny Bird of Courage

Gay no doubt, but there are some very LSD-like RCs on the market at the moment. 1P-LSD _very_ similar, and AL-LAD is, in my experience, better in terms of being more positive and happy an shit (but maybe less introspective, depends on what you're looking for I guess).

2015-07-25 at 6:43 AM UTC in Dear American's

Lanny Bird of Courage

Yeah, like just a cheapie glass pipe. I bought it at a smoke shop so I guess when they signed up to accept credit cards or whatever they had to put down that they sold "vice goods" or whatever. It's legal to buy a pipe of course, but I guess based on my history of usage it was considered fraud or something dumb like that. Kinda funny considering I paid for booze with the same card the same day, but I guess smoking paraphernalia is a notch above in the minds of credit card companies.

2015-07-25 at 6:40 AM UTC in Psychomanthis should move to the united states

Lanny Bird of Courage

Define 'consent' in the context of obtaining nutrition. Is a vine morally wrong for strangling a sapling to death, because no 'consent' was given?

I reject "consent" as a primary qualification for morality to start with. I think we, for example, would be fully within our rights to stop a murder from killing people against his consent. The relevant question is whether or not an action maximizes the well being of moral agents. Animals, and particularly mammals, seem to have intellectual abilities not to far from our own, they seem to the best of our knowledge to be able to experience happiness and suffering. I don't believe there are any non-human animals that have equal moral agency as ourselves, but I do think that minimally certain mammals are capable of suffering (and I think you'd be hard pressed to argue otherwise). So in the case of vines strangling other plants to death, the act is morally neutral since there doesn't seem to be significant evidence that plants can experience pleasure or suffering in a way that's meaningful analogous to our own experience.

But even if you did view consent of affected parties as a requirement for moral action, you can't reconcile a rejection of beastiality and an acceptance of meat eating. I suspect the predominant view is that animals simply are not moral agents since they don't possess rationality (one among many reasons deontology is a crock), and if a person holding such a view rejects beastiality it would have to be on the grounds of divine prohibition or something equally silly. "But it's natural" is a prime example of the naturalistic fallacy and "you've got to eat to survive" is both a false dichotomy (you can eat without consuming animals) and a non-sequitur ("I need to do X to survive" does not imply X is good in any way shape or form. You could be forced, at gun point, to murder 20 children. Doing that would be necessary to survival but it certainly wouldn't be a moral positive).

All higher life needs to feed on living, or once-living things. Animal or plant, what is the difference, really? .

So again, animal vs. plant, the difference is capacity to suffer (on my view). But no matter how you look at it, beastiality and eating meat come as a package unless you invoke divine law or something similarly stupid.

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