Comment by MrMcCall | Hacker News Reader

Comment by MrMcCall | Hacker News Reader

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What's important is that you know who is deserving and who isn't, right?

I did not say that mind or consciousness is unique to humans. Our difference is that only we can control our minds and only we have a conscience to help us make moral decisions, which is always within the realm of self-reflection. Animals only possess the barest minimum of mind and self-reflection, for the sole purpose of survival, which pressures them to be as fit as possible. We exist at a different scale of consciousness.

Morality only exists within human beings because only we can calculate (using our mind, under the pressure of our conscience) how our actions might affect others positively or negatively. Then we use our greatest gift, our free will, to choose between selfish and selfless behaviors.

Even our attitudes can be chosen, over time. Choosing to be empathetic is an essential path forward to positive group behavior, and those without empathy are dangerous folk, indeed. Helping our younger generations develop a matrix of positive group morality is the highest purpose of education, sadly mostly neglected nowadays.

You should remember, as a CEO, that your choices bear a greater burden because they affect an entire organization as well as all the folks affected by whatever it is your firm produces (I don't know, I didn't look).

And, my friend, my universe is not at all capricious, but my fellow human beings are definitely flaky, being solely motivated by selfish desires, few having any more than a passing interest in the well-being of others. Of course, I do not consider that some being given more wealth and/or hardship than others is capricious; others surely disagree, obviously. As to the fairness of our criminal justice system, that's on the human beings making those decisions, not the universe for giving them the power to shade things however they choose.

You don't know to what degree animals are conscious or control their behavior.

Empathy is a lot like turning the other cheek which the institutions of power like to beat the small minded and powerless with in order to perpetuate themselves. Sure, it's often good, but there are also cases where it isn't so good or useful, however having the population docile by default is always good for power.

People become CEOs because they're power hungry and good at manipulating others. Those sorts of people are least likely to buy the empathy line in any non performative way, so I'd save my breath.

The flakiness and inconsistency of humans is just a reflection of a pattern that repeats itself at all scales of the universe. There is no coherent order, only the chaotic ramifications of countless minds, both human and non, coevolving the universe together.

>> You don't know to what degree animals are conscious or control their behavior.

Just because you don't know something or even understand that it can be known, in no way limits my knowledge. It just paints yourself a confident fool who already knows it all. Sounds like a CEO, neh?

And, BTW, I do know. Also, I know that you don't know that I know, because you believe that no one can know, which is solely because you, yourself, don't know. As the Doobie Brothers sang so many years ago, "What a fool believes..."

In my humility, I say to you, "There are things you know that I do not." As well, I say to you, "There are things that I know that you do not." Now, here's the tricky bit, I know that what I know is more important than what you know.

How do I know that last, crucial, bit? Because you think there is a way to decide who gets resources and who doesn't, and that it should be based upon some value function that folks "smart" like you can determine for one and all. Pleeeaaase. I am a student of history, which is riddled with folks like you, perched upon your spire claiming to have the voice of reason to speak over your lessors. It's tired and shall not do well as this Age of Truth lurches forward.

That said, it's your choice. Every fool has chosen to be a fool. And the first step to not being a fool is having the humility to entertain the possibility that you are, indeed, a fool. Here's the secret: we all are, to some extent, but a few of have the humility and desire to escape it.

As to "coherent order", we are the only beings capable of consciously designing and creating such order, but our being slaves to our lower, selfish selves has prevented our doing so. As with all things human, the choice is ours, and the choices we have made thus far have been less than optimal.

You are obviously either a crank or a hardcore religious kool-aid drinker. Which is it?

As for this age of truth lurching forward, have you not noticed the regress? If only the world progressed towards order.

You can call me what you want, but you have told us all who you are, and that's all I need.

We move forward together, usually with the loudest and most ignorant leading the way. Same as it ever was. The important thing is which side we each take. I side with compassion, justice, honesty, and science, which puts me in the minority, thank God.

It is naught but crypto-fascism the proposition that there is a choice between exercising empathy and being an immoral character. It is moral authoritarianism, the gaslighting of others, trying to make them believe that free will exists in the service of neo-conservative morality's dialectic of good judgement and evil judgement being a problem to consider at all in the first place. The reality is that morality lives way beyond what the rhetoric of neoliberal initiatives try to seductively present to vulnerable intellects and hearts.

Advertising empathy as being better than a slice of bread is just fascism and a strain of neo-colonial desire in a clever (but not clever enough) disguise. The global threats to capitalism's productivity goals aren't fooling anyone. The Devil's idle hands and economic regression will have to retreat back to the drawing board and find a new military tactic that would be more effective than trying to disguise morality as something cool looking (when in reality it looks ugly and unappealing as an asset).

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