The first point directly counteracts your previous stances - if the conclusion is the end of sentience then it doesn't matter how this is got to, as there's nothing sentient to judge it. Therefore all your previous points must have been subjective.

The second point was made for comedic effect.. I might copywrite it as a corollary to Godwin's law.

 You started by arguing that the least amount of harm should be done to sentient lifeforms, and conclude by saying everything should be killed.

Admit it, you're beaten.

I'm done on this thread I think.

No Sentience = no value, so by your axiom, absence of sentient life is the zero state.

Therefore, a universe without sentient life must be the worst outcome of the universe, by your self-proclaimed axiom, irrespective of how this is achieved.

You can't have it both ways, and you're being twisted in circles trying to wriggle out of a stance you realise you can't maintain. It's fun to watch, but now I really do need to meet a friend for a beer. Will check in on this tomorrow though.

I generally consider moral condemnations to only be as important as the respect I have for the opinion person doing the condemning. Why would I give weight to being morally condemned by fundamentalists for my lifestyle? Why would I expect anyone else to give weight to my moral opinions?

Oh I care very much what you do to me, I don't care whether you think it is moral or not. What you have in this case is a question of law dealing with the reality that we all have to live together, not morality.

Objectively, money isn't worth anything. For the most part, money doesn't exist beyond digital numbers and occasionally printed numbers. A $20 bill is not worth $20 except for the perception that it is worth $20. Like ethics, money is completely a human construct and is worth precisely what we believe it to be worth. It is also a value that changes radically over time. Objectively, the $20 bill is worth less than the linen it is printed on because it cannot be easily repurposed. It's only value is because we arbitrarily agreed to use it as an object to exchange labor and the products of our labor. 

Oh? So if stealing from you makes me happier and relieves me of my suffering (which was greater than yours) I should do so?

You are the one who supports the variable amount of suffering as the basis for ethics. I do not. I don't care how much suffering the rapist is relieved from by the act or how much pleasure is experienced or how little suffering is experienced by the victim. Such questioning is irrelevant to me. Rape is always immoral, no exceptions, even if it is done without causing any suffering. 

I do.

I see no reason why I should waste my time trying to persuade others to have my ethical standards. Why should I even care what your ethical standards are? Generally, I live my life not caring what other people think, I only care when that thought becomes action.

I would say it is quite immoral and most people would probably agree, but remember it was you that said the majority is retarded. I also say that I don't care whether the offender considers the act moral or immoral. The morality of an act is irrelevant when deciding whether or not an act should be illegal. The fact that allowing people to run around infecting others with AIDS would lead to a number of undesirable effects in society is enough to make it illegal.

My point is that ALL value is subjective, and whether something has any value at all is subjective. For example, if I had two inflatable Arnolds, I would consider it a negative value. I would give away something I do value, say money, to someone in exchange for them removing the inflatable Arnolds. Water is valuable when I am thirsty and can drink it, but when the same water is flooding my basement I will pay very handsomely to have it removed. A sheep is valuable in my freezer, but a sheep running around in my house has a negative value to me. In all cases, the value of an object is relative to the subject perceiving it whether it is money, sheep, gold, water, beans, inflatable Arnolds, pleasure or suffering.  

Yes. 

I'm a speciesist, I do not have ethics that cover rocks. Most humans are far more important. And yes, raping a person in a coma is immoral. I have no desire to rape you, be assured I have raped everyone I desire to rape, all zero of them. 

I have already said my morality is arbitrary. It is solely based on what makes me feel good (moral) and what makes me feel bad or guilty (immoral). I see no need, nor relevance of, having a single moral axiom from which all morality logically stems from. The attempt to do so will inevitably lead to gaping holes, such as your idea that killing is ok and rape is ok as long as there is no suffering. I would feel terribly guilty killing someone without a really good reason, and if I had a really good reason I wouldn't worry about suffering, and in some cases might go out of my way to increase suffering. 

Well that sort of situation only happens in fairytale books but yes, rape is always immoral no matter what kind of imaginary thought experiment you care to create. I participated in a rape fantasy once and even had problems with that even though I knew it was all fantasy. So if the future of the universe relies on me raping someone you are all fucked and I won't feel the least bit guilty about it. 

As I said before, you can declare whatever morality you want. Morality is not objective, it is subjective, and it is based in our emotions. Speaking of a single, universal, rational morality is as incomprehensible as arguing for a single, universal, rational standard of beauty.  

So basically your standard is that if your psychology permits you to do something without making you feel guilty then it's ok. Way to take your human intellect and throw it out the window.

Irrelevant, thought experiments have no need to be practically plausible.

So here you are telling me my standards create gaping holes while yours won't let you torture someone for a limited amount of time in order to save everyone from being tortured forever, including the person you could have raped?

"Hello there, would you rather rape me or sentence me and everyone else to eternal torture?"

"Rape is always wrong so you should suffer forever instead"

The idiocy of this speaks for itself.

The choosing of a moral system or standard necessarily involves some subjectivity. Once that standard has been chosen however, any logic it's based on is objective. If you disagree with the standard (like you disagree with mine) then you should ignore anything that logically follows from it, I really don't care whether someone as insane and cruel as you agrees with my assessments.

I'd really like you to take the rape thought experiment and explain to me how his answer makes any sense whatsoever and how imposing eternal torture on everyone rather than a comparatively trivial amount of torture on one person isn't cruel.

Given his answer I would literally rather ask the most outta this world insane, tripping balls 24/7 lunatic what the right answer to the thought experiment is if it were real, since at least then we'd have a chance that guy's imaginary talking mushroom friend pulls the right answer outta it's ass.

No, he said it would be wrong. If he had said he should commit the rape but might not be able to because he'd feel like an asshole, his answer would have actually been in the ballpark of making some goddamn sense.

No, he said his morality is arbitrary mush depending entirely on whatever his silly psychology makes him feel.

It's different to argue morality has some subjectivity than it is to argue that a great way to figure out what's moral is to just do whatever your irrational psychology makes you feel good about. Even people who argue for complete moral subjectivity typically establish rules that bind them regardless of how following that rule in all situations makes them feel, such as it's wrong to kick a baby in the head for no productive purpose whatsoever even if every fiber of your being urges you to do it and you'd feel no guilt about it.

That's the good thing about these forums, no bullshit mod intervention every time someone says doodyhead.

I raised the issue of the competitive ecosystems all life inhabits and I think your version of ethics discounts this layer of complexity. 'Maximum welfare' certainly includes impinging on the rights of other sentient beings, unless we are imagining some sort of conceptual paradise in which nothing with sentience is hungry for flesh and blood. 

I'd like to pick at the idea of suffering, too. Pain is the body's way of encouraging organisms with complex nervous systems to avoid physically damaging situations. In a way then, central elements of suffering are vital to our well being, vital to our 'maximum welfare'. 

Obviously suffering’s on a sliding scale and after a certain point there’s no return.  How much love and friendship do you think there is in the last stages of starvation in a death camp.  Those that helped others were the first to die.  Those that survive are the most selfish having secured positions that would enable them certain privileges and more food.

Or do you think what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger? If so you should read Christopher Hitchin’s last essay in Vanity Fair when he was close to death and had survived, up to that point, various rounds of chemotherapy and radiation.
Vanity Fair – January 2012 ‘The Trial of the Will am I really stronger’.

Can sentient beings ever avoid suffering?  The Buddha’s simple definition of enlightenment as ‘the end of suffering’ is an incomplete negative definition, as it only tells you what enlightenment is not, and not what it is. He was silent so that the mind can’t make it something to believe in or strive for but he is implying you will have to find out for yourself.
 

In terms of animal rights Manageri is asking for a threshold of sentience for all sentient beings, not a threshold of moral responsibility or self-awareness only sentient welfare.  I think what he means by objectivity here in this example is if an individual accepts this as true then it means that logically you cannot eat meat, not without being a hypocrite. Those that want to understand more could read some information on basic animal rights.

Also, if that concept is too tough then an individual could perhaps support basic animal welfare, rather than rights, this is where you would consciously eat organic meat and have consideration for the life the animal has before it dies and perhaps campaign to stop factory farming.  You would also be concerned about laboratory testing and the way domestic pets are treated etc. Native Americans for instance prayed for animals after they killed them as a mark of respect to animal welfare showing how far back this idea goes.

What he is saying here is nothing new this concept has been adopted by the animal rights movement now for many years.
 

You came pretty close to saying it yourself. Psychology != rationality. Our psychology is a combination of unrational impulses created by our DNA and our upbringing. If you can't see why it's better to rationally decide whether enslaving black people is better than deciding it with your psychology that is by design inherently racist, then I really don't know what to say to you, you're just too big an idiot/asshole to converse with.

Where's the difference? It's not in the outside world, that's for sure, as allowing a rape and committing a rape still means one girl got raped. The only difference is in your head because you've managed to separate committing an atrocity from allowing an atrocity somehow through bullshit mental gymnastics.

Yeah, being a sociopath is extremely desirable for the sociopath, just not for anyone else. I can't fix it if you don't care about anyone else, I just hope you stay the fuck away from us.

Which are ridicilous. I mean this is like arguing we shouldn't have any speed limits because some fucknut thinks going over 3 mph is too dangerous in all circumstances.

Technically, if I did have the urge to kick babies, I would be a better person than you because I'd have kept those impulses in check rather than never having to deal with them at all. It's like some idiot vegans who boast about how the taste of meat makes them sick as if that's somehow a virtue, when obviously that just makes veganism easier and means they need to overcome less obstacles to do it.

Oh, and the thing that makes you immoral is the fact you would, at least according to your statements here, kick babies in the head if your psychology urged you to do so.

The conclusion of your ethics is the end of sentient life in the universe - do you find this totally acceptable?

But I do exist, so in order to get to that state, existing sentient beings would have to die.

I would prefer that I and any children I may have are not fast tracked into oblivion thanks.. Don't worry, the heat death of the universe will get us in the end, but there's time for a little interest first. Frankly, what you want is boring. Life in all its forms, even with suffering, is at least interesting. *

*This is not my ethical stance, just a throwaway comment, so don't feel you need to consider it as such.

Your whole paradigm is based around the assumption that sentient life is necessarily negative to the net value of the system's welfare. (you have said as much earlier).

 I'd like to hear your reasoning that an additional sentient being decreases overall welfare.

And yet you continue to converse with me. 

The difference is one of who is causing the suffering and the fact that I would have to live with myself afterwards. 

I think it is obvious that a psychopath wouldn't worry about morality except to the extent that the psychopath might want to fit in with society, so would behave in socially acceptable ways to avoid standing out. A psychopath wouldn't bother creating a code of ethics to restrain themselves. You say I should stay the fuck away... you are the one suggesting the rational conclusion of your ethics is the destruction of every sentient being. I am completely harmless because I have no desire to harm anyone, at least until a person gives me a really good reason. I have already stated that I wouldn't harm an innocent even if some psychopath was holding others hostage attempting to force me to. 

If that is your definition of more moral. I wouldn't agree, I would say that a person who desires to kick babies in the head but doesn't because maybe they are afraid of going to prison is hardly moral. An inherently good person is someone who doesn't want to kick babies. Someone struggling with themselves to avoid kicking babies is only one mistake away from killing a baby, not someone I would want around any baby I care about. 

I would agree, I am sickened by videos where you see someone getting beat up in public and no one steps in to stop it while dozens of people are recording it on their phones. On the other hand, if someone puts a gun to someones head and demands that I rape or kill the woman next to me or they are going to kill a bunch of people, I am not going to do it. I would attempt to stop the psycho if I saw an opportunity. Besides, it is a false choice anyway, because anyone psychotic enough to present a person with that choice can not be trusted to uphold their end of the bargain. Trusting that psycho would be pretty irrational if you ask me.  

It's not exactly a question of overall welfare, at least not if you're gonna make that mean how good the average life is. Let's just say for argument's sake that the maximum pleasure and maximum pain possible have equal but opposite value, and in a hypothetical universe you have 10 people experiencing each, so a total of 20 people. Now if I give you the choise of taking one of the suffering people and moving him to the pleasurable side of the universe, or instead creating 10 new pleasure experiencing people, are you gonna add the 10 people? I'd argue that's clearly the wrong choise despite the fact that would be the better option if you simply use the math of average welfare, as there's nothing good about giving life to a potential person who has no need for it at the cost of torturing an already existing person who clearly has a need not to be tortured, ergo you can't use simple math like that when it comes to the creation of people.

I'd rather focus on the ethics of how to deal with existing shit than turn this into a discussion on antinatalism but if that's of great interest to people I suppose we can do that too.

Purely for the reason it isn't a private conversation so I can show people how fucked up the conclusions of your stances are.

So assuming you have the power to do so, not preventing a rape doesn't make you feel guilty at all?

You mean kinda like how you don't bother to do that either beyond the point of calling whatever you feel like doing moral?

You said you'd rather let everyone be tortured for eternity than rape one woman, and you call yourself harmless? What definition of harmless could you possibly be using?

I dunno, I'm not really impressed if a random dude tells me they've never molested a child. Now if a pedophile tells me they've had the urge to do so for a long time but never did it, I'd say he's propably a pretty ethical guy just based on that. Obviously that doesn't mean it's better to be a pedophile or that I'd want that guy around kids just because he hasn't molested one yet.

I support anyone's choise to do whatever they want to themselves. If you wanna stick your dick into a beehive, that's fine by me, just don't force new people into this shithole. I'm rather not fond of the fact my mongoloid parents decided they have the right to gamble with my welfare just because they wanted someone to change their shitty diapers when they're old and all that other fucking bullshit parents think they're entitled to.

There is horrible shit happening all over the world every day. Theoretically, I have the power to stop some of it. I could strap on my guns, track down and kill people who do evil shit, preventing them from doing more evil shit. I don't and no, I don't feel guilty about it. Now if a rape was happening in front of me, I would kill the SOB without thinking twice. I wouldn't kill the person being raped to prevent the rape, nor would I kill some random innocent bystander if in some fucked up way that would prevent the rape. 

What is rape if it isn't causing harm? Just because you somehow justify in your fucked up head that it makes the world a better place doesn't mean you are not causing real and immediate harm to the person you are raping.