Just for the sake of disagreement
Dec. 10th, 2004 09:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewduckerThere are large numbers of things I believe that go against the grain of common opinion. Even in a place like LJ, where it's possible to attract people who feel likewise about things, I'm liable to say something every third day that causes _someone_ to get upset. In an attempt to get it out of my system, here's a few off the top of my head.
I believe that our brains are made of chemicals, and that our minds are the product of events that occur within them. I thus believe that our thoughts can be affected by changes in chemical levels in the body. Anyone who disagrees is invited to spend three days on amphetamines and then come off of them cold turkey without becoming violently unpleasant.
I believe that people are actually pretty fucking insignificant on the grand scheme of things, occupying a tiny sliver of barely livable landscape on the outside of a tiny speck on the edge of a not-terribly-special galaxy. It seems dramatically unlikely to me that humankind will survive more than a few hundred-thousand years, and frankly I don't really care that much.
I believe that believing that there are invisible supernatural beings that will answer prayers, reward the good and punish the bad, but never in a way that is concretely verifiable is a sign that you're not willing to be critical about the world. Sure, it'd be nice if the world worked according to a grand plan and it all worked out in the end - I'd _love_ that. But to believe that it actually does with _no evidence whatsoever_ seems akin to madness.
I believe that all aesthetics are purely personal. Like Leopard-Skin waste-paper-baskets - that's _your_ choice. If you want to wear brown and purple - that's up to you. If you actually think that Piers Anthony is the best writer of all time - fine - that's _your opinion_. Just remember that's all it bloody well is.
I believe likewise about morality. All morality means is "I wish the world was this way." It doesn't mean the world was _designed_ to be that way, or that the world is somehow _supposed_ to be that way - just that you'd be happier if it was.
I _don't_ believe that this means I can't make choices about the way the world should be. Just because my views are personal and Osama Bin Laden's are likewise doesn't mean I have to agree with him, or npot be in favour of stopping him. I believe in freedom of sexuality, some people think homosexuality is wrong. I fully believe that both of these views are equally valid on a purely emotional level. But I'm damned if I'm going to just stand by and let them _do_ anything about it - I want the world to work the way _I_ want it to, goddamit.
I believe that central control does not work for large organisations. Nobody understands complex systems. There's a fair argument to say that you _can't_ understand complex systems in detail. Therefore I don't think that centralised systems work for dealing with complexity. This is the (vastly simplified) reason I don't think pure socialism is workable.
I believe that most people don't think about consequences and will try to get away with just a little bit of naughtiness here and there. And that en masse this lack of thought and selfishness can lead to terrible things occurring. This is why I don't think that pure capitalism is workable.
I believe, in fact, that no system is workable. Systems are simple and rule-based. Any system of rules rapidly leads to a variety of outcomes that were never predicted by the people creating them and usually cause a fair sprinkling of things that are the opposite of what they actually wanted in the first place. The world is a complex squishy place - attempting to put it inside nice straight lines just means chopping off more and more bits that stick over the edges.
I believe that this is all you get and you should bloody well get on with it.
Fucking hell that feels better
I believe that our brains are made of chemicals, and that our minds are the product of events that occur within them. I thus believe that our thoughts can be affected by changes in chemical levels in the body. Anyone who disagrees is invited to spend three days on amphetamines and then come off of them cold turkey without becoming violently unpleasant.
I believe that people are actually pretty fucking insignificant on the grand scheme of things, occupying a tiny sliver of barely livable landscape on the outside of a tiny speck on the edge of a not-terribly-special galaxy. It seems dramatically unlikely to me that humankind will survive more than a few hundred-thousand years, and frankly I don't really care that much.
I believe that believing that there are invisible supernatural beings that will answer prayers, reward the good and punish the bad, but never in a way that is concretely verifiable is a sign that you're not willing to be critical about the world. Sure, it'd be nice if the world worked according to a grand plan and it all worked out in the end - I'd _love_ that. But to believe that it actually does with _no evidence whatsoever_ seems akin to madness.
I believe that all aesthetics are purely personal. Like Leopard-Skin waste-paper-baskets - that's _your_ choice. If you want to wear brown and purple - that's up to you. If you actually think that Piers Anthony is the best writer of all time - fine - that's _your opinion_. Just remember that's all it bloody well is.
I believe likewise about morality. All morality means is "I wish the world was this way." It doesn't mean the world was _designed_ to be that way, or that the world is somehow _supposed_ to be that way - just that you'd be happier if it was.
I _don't_ believe that this means I can't make choices about the way the world should be. Just because my views are personal and Osama Bin Laden's are likewise doesn't mean I have to agree with him, or npot be in favour of stopping him. I believe in freedom of sexuality, some people think homosexuality is wrong. I fully believe that both of these views are equally valid on a purely emotional level. But I'm damned if I'm going to just stand by and let them _do_ anything about it - I want the world to work the way _I_ want it to, goddamit.
I believe that central control does not work for large organisations. Nobody understands complex systems. There's a fair argument to say that you _can't_ understand complex systems in detail. Therefore I don't think that centralised systems work for dealing with complexity. This is the (vastly simplified) reason I don't think pure socialism is workable.
I believe that most people don't think about consequences and will try to get away with just a little bit of naughtiness here and there. And that en masse this lack of thought and selfishness can lead to terrible things occurring. This is why I don't think that pure capitalism is workable.
I believe, in fact, that no system is workable. Systems are simple and rule-based. Any system of rules rapidly leads to a variety of outcomes that were never predicted by the people creating them and usually cause a fair sprinkling of things that are the opposite of what they actually wanted in the first place. The world is a complex squishy place - attempting to put it inside nice straight lines just means chopping off more and more bits that stick over the edges.
I believe that this is all you get and you should bloody well get on with it.
Fucking hell that feels better
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no subject
Date: 2004-12-10 01:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-10 01:45 pm (UTC)It's repulsive. But turned out to be very useful one night when I needed to be sick into something and someone was in the bathroom.
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Date: 2004-12-10 06:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-10 01:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-10 01:45 pm (UTC)It did :->
Aaaah, catharsis...
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Date: 2004-12-10 02:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-10 02:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-10 02:48 pm (UTC)I might say that I can understand why some people would believe that homosexuality is wrong, even though I don't agree with them. I might say that I can understand why some people would believe that the homeless deserve to die on the streets with no aid, even though I don't agree with them. I might say that I can understand why some people would believe that war is a fine "solution" to some conflict or other, even though I don't agree with them. But there are certain places where I draw the line and say, "No. This one isn't subjective. It's isn't a question of different opinions. This one is just a moral truth."
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Date: 2004-12-10 02:51 pm (UTC)But why is it moral truth? Does anything make it more moral truth than the others, except that you can't think of any reason to agree with it?
Is it purely your gut instinct telling you it's the truth?
And if so, how much do you trust your gut?
no subject
Date: 2004-12-10 03:40 pm (UTC)Pain is, quite definitively, bad. Our body uses pain as a negative neural message to help avoid bodily injury. If pain is bad, then the purposeful causing of pain is bad. (Though I -- unlike some people -- would make an exception for consensual pain-giving.)
Most other moral issues -- even those I have extremely strong opinions about -- I can see both sides. But there are a few I can't. That might just be me being less open-minded than you apparently are.
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Date: 2004-12-10 03:55 pm (UTC)I mean, you can make a dozen other, better arguments for the moral belief that you shouldn't cause pain. But you would have to make a meta-ethical argument to show that "you shouldn't cause pain" means "it is an objective moral truth that you shouldn't cause pain," rather than (as Andy is saying) "I don't like it when you cause pain."
no subject
Date: 2004-12-10 04:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-10 04:33 pm (UTC)Wait, do you believe everything your body tells you? My body tells me doughnuts are made out of pure soy protein and contain your recommended daily allowance of sixteen delicious vitamins and minerals, but I know better than to trust that lying bastard, yo.
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Date: 2004-12-10 05:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-10 05:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-12 08:33 am (UTC)Which is why I don't believe in any absolutes at all. Not in terms of morality, definition or existence.
And yet I still am happy to say that "hurting people against their will is bad", although with the caveat of that just being my opinion and there are people out there with different moral systems that think it's just fine to do what I consider to be horrendous things.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-10 02:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-10 02:28 pm (UTC)Was it recent?
I just went and counted though, and you're right - there's ten of them. Wasn't deliberate though.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-11 01:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-10 03:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-10 03:13 pm (UTC)You will, however, have to wear a big badge with the word 'Goth' on it.
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Date: 2004-12-10 03:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-10 03:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-10 03:18 pm (UTC)Not -all- of your opinions, but many of them. Some of these ones.
But then, you knew that.
I liked 1000 Suns though, so you will forgive me everything.
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Date: 2004-12-10 03:56 pm (UTC)Shame we never got to either of the two set-pieces I'd had in mind when we started.
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Date: 2004-12-10 06:19 pm (UTC)I can even remember what some of the characters were called, save for Scott's priest and Adam's Terminator thing: Michael Valentine, Null, Randall and Melissa St John. Hm, Adam's character may have been "Joe". In fact, probably was ;-)
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Date: 2004-12-11 01:44 am (UTC)1000 Suns was the WW2 one. The phrase comes from the words that Oppenheim said when the first atomic bomb was set off:
If the radiance of a thousand suns
Were to burst at once into the sky
That would be like the splendor of the Mighty one...
I am become Death,
The shatterer of Worlds.
He said the last bit, the whole thing is a quote from the Bhagavad Gita. The climax of the game was intended to take place at an atomic test site, or possibly Hiroshima.
Shame my brain was completely fucked by stress at the time.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-11 02:38 am (UTC)anyhow, I was the only one who liked asura, I think.
1000 Suns had me (richmond crawford, rob as Carlton Baines, Joe as somebody Marsh and Clare as Hera ;-)
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Date: 2004-12-11 02:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-11 02:46 am (UTC)I'm sure I remember sessions that were mostly just Rob and I
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Date: 2004-12-11 02:51 am (UTC)If you remembercorrectly, Rob and you were from Oxford, Gina was from Cambridge...
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Date: 2004-12-11 02:55 am (UTC)Asura - I still have questions
Date: 2004-12-11 03:00 am (UTC)This is your chance to clear it up for the survivors once and for all! :P
Re: Asura - I still have questions
Date: 2004-12-11 03:05 am (UTC)In the end it came down to you, with a gun in your hand, behind the person they'd been training you to kill, with everyone else screaming "No, don't do it!" because they'd discovered the trick. At which point you froze in indecision, wavered, shot him, then shot yourself.
Personally I felt it was a complete triumph :->
Re: Asura - I still have questions
Date: 2004-12-11 03:18 am (UTC)Might have been better to do that Dark Tower rip off instead. :-P
Was it Asura where we famously went down a mine and nothing happened? ;-)
Re: Asura - I still have questions
Date: 2004-12-11 03:20 am (UTC)Possibly you'd have enjoyed it more on more sleep.
Re: Asura - I still have questions
Date: 2004-12-12 08:19 am (UTC)I'll give you the sleep thing, but not sleeping a lot at uni got me my 2.1, so it was (probably) a sacrifice worth making. *twitch*
Re: Asura - I still have questions
Date: 2004-12-11 03:21 am (UTC)http://www.harveycartel.org/metanet/downloads.html
Donload N the Ninja!
no subject
Date: 2004-12-10 03:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-10 03:55 pm (UTC)fwiw, you don't upset me, you just make me think.
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Date: 2004-12-10 04:00 pm (UTC)And I firmly believe that the idea of 'faith' was invented as a way to make believing things purely because you were told them and they'd be nice to believe somehow a _good_ thing.
It's a masterpiece of marketing.
1: "I have a talking car."
2: "I can't hear it."
3: "It used to talk to anyone. Now it only talks to people after they die. And even then, only if they believe it talks before they die, without proof."
It's amazing, it really is.
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Date: 2004-12-10 04:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-11 12:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-14 10:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-14 10:30 am (UTC)Oh, go on - dissect it and show me my contradictions :->