We just shot the messenger, regardless of the message’s value. If Konkvistador is right about oppression and emotional torment being necessary features of human interaction, then we cannot even take satisfaction in that. Of course, that would only increase our ressentiment.
Why do we think that suffering is a necessary feature of human experience? Suffering’s presence throughout human history can be more easily explained by society’s unwillingness or inability (lack of appropriate knowledge) to take necessary steps, rather than the thesis that humans must suffer to be human.
Corporations do not act directly, they always act through their officers, directors, and misc employees. Yet it is perfectly coherent to say “Papa John’s Pizza, Inc. negligently hit my car.” Every knows that means something like “A Papa John’s delivery driver drove negligently and hit my car.”
In short, the usage you complain of is isomorphic to “Powerful members of past society have been unwilling or unable to take the necessary steps to prevent human suffering.” Pretending you misunderstood me is logically rude.
For the reasons I stated, I’m unsure that Konkvistador’s assertion is entitled to a high prior. It does not seem to be the simplest explanation, and there doesn’t seem to be compelling evidence that differentiates it from competing theories.
Suffering’s presence throughout human history can be more easily explained by society’s unwillingness or inability (lack of appropriate knowledge) to take necessary steps, rather than the thesis that humans must suffer to be human.
Both of these seem like bad explanations for suffering.
The first explanation looks fairly plausible to me. We live in a hostile universe where pretty much everything is trying to kill or maim us, including our own bodies which eventually die of old age. That’s a lot of suffering, right there, and we have barely begun to develop technologies which mitigate a small portion of it. If that is true, then we should not be surprised to find suffering throughout human history.
I didn’t understand TimS to be only saying that there has been a lot of suffering in history. I understood him to be saying that the cause of this suffering was “unwillingness and inability” (by “society”) to prevent it.
Now perhaps it is true that if society was willing and able to prevent suffering, there would have been less of it. But it’s equally true that if society was willing and able to prevent hurricanes or sunrises there would have been less of them. These are bad explanations.
I took his statement to mean society was, on some occasions, (a) able but unwilling to prevent suffering; (b) willing but unable to prevent suffering; or (c) both unwilling and unable to prevent suffering; and, therefore, suffering was (and still is) present. My point was that, regardless of (a), (b) and (c) happen all the time, since our technology simply isn’t at a quasi-godlike level yet.
Everyone thinks Nietzsche is an asshole, but I think he’s a badly misinterpreted sensitive soul. The idea of an agent entitled to make promisesbecause the agent could guarantee to follow through appeals to me a great deal.
That’s probably a lot closer to Buddha than wirehead.
He certainly like hyperbole—and I don’t defend his writings on women. I’m not sure if hyperbole and “play the asshole” have the same meaning or implication.
Nietzsche’s theory of the overman / superman is viewed with hostility because a bowdlerized form was used to support Nazi ideology—giving Nietzsche’s philosophy a negative reputation in the English speaking philosophy community. I think that Nietzsche would have be horrified by the Nazis because he was more of a proto-existentialist.
Nietzsche refused to attend his sister’s wedding on the grounds that she was marrying an anti-semite, and admitted in one of his letters that the thought of his sister having sex with that man made him physically ill.
I think Nietzsche liked teasing people he considered to be his inferiors, and he did it by saying things that were easy to misinterpret. I think that’s at least in the neighborhood of playing the asshole.
Walter Kaufmann’s book on Nietzsche says that Nietzsche liked Jews better than Germans. My impression of Nietzsche was that he was trying to get at the roots of individual judgement and thriving (which I suppose in in the neighborhood of existentialism if you ignore the thriving part), and would have been revolted by Nazi collectivism.
I always understood Nietzsche’s references to Jews to be purely metaphorical. Their main purpose in the narrative is to convince the Romans to accept Jesus. That does not sound like any Jews that actually existed.
(I justify ignoring the debate in early Christianity over whether they were Jews by leaping ahead to their conclusion that they weren’t.)
Thus, I’m not sure whether Nietzsche’s writings give any useful evidence over whether he preferred Jews or Germans.
[Nietzsche] was trying to get at the roots of individual judgement and thriving.
We just shot the messenger, regardless of the message’s value. If Konkvistador is right about oppression and emotional torment being necessary features of human interaction, then we cannot even take satisfaction in that. Of course, that would only increase our ressentiment.
I hate it.
Why do we think that suffering is a necessary feature of human experience? Suffering’s presence throughout human history can be more easily explained by society’s unwillingness or inability (lack of appropriate knowledge) to take necessary steps, rather than the thesis that humans must suffer to be human.
“Society” is not an agent.
A parallel point:
Corporations do not act directly, they always act through their officers, directors, and misc employees. Yet it is perfectly coherent to say “Papa John’s Pizza, Inc. negligently hit my car.” Every knows that means something like “A Papa John’s delivery driver drove negligently and hit my car.”
In short, the usage you complain of is isomorphic to “Powerful members of past society have been unwilling or unable to take the necessary steps to prevent human suffering.” Pretending you misunderstood me is logically rude.
I have no outstanding personal reasons to think so. I am simply being a good Bayesian and placing a high prior on Konkvistador’s wisdom.
For the reasons I stated, I’m unsure that Konkvistador’s assertion is entitled to a high prior. It does not seem to be the simplest explanation, and there doesn’t seem to be compelling evidence that differentiates it from competing theories.
Both of these seem like bad explanations for suffering.
The first explanation looks fairly plausible to me. We live in a hostile universe where pretty much everything is trying to kill or maim us, including our own bodies which eventually die of old age. That’s a lot of suffering, right there, and we have barely begun to develop technologies which mitigate a small portion of it. If that is true, then we should not be surprised to find suffering throughout human history.
I didn’t understand TimS to be only saying that there has been a lot of suffering in history. I understood him to be saying that the cause of this suffering was “unwillingness and inability” (by “society”) to prevent it.
Now perhaps it is true that if society was willing and able to prevent suffering, there would have been less of it. But it’s equally true that if society was willing and able to prevent hurricanes or sunrises there would have been less of them. These are bad explanations.
I took his statement to mean society was, on some occasions, (a) able but unwilling to prevent suffering; (b) willing but unable to prevent suffering; or (c) both unwilling and unable to prevent suffering; and, therefore, suffering was (and still is) present. My point was that, regardless of (a), (b) and (c) happen all the time, since our technology simply isn’t at a quasi-godlike level yet.
What’s your model of a human that doesn’t suffer? Wireheading? Buddha?
Everyone thinks Nietzsche is an asshole, but I think he’s a badly misinterpreted sensitive soul. The idea of an agent entitled to make promises because the agent could guarantee to follow through appeals to me a great deal.
That’s probably a lot closer to Buddha than wirehead.
Not everyone thinks of Nietzsche as an asshole, but it’s certainly the case that he liked to play the asshole.
He certainly like hyperbole—and I don’t defend his writings on women. I’m not sure if hyperbole and “play the asshole” have the same meaning or implication.
Nietzsche’s theory of the overman / superman is viewed with hostility because a bowdlerized form was used to support Nazi ideology—giving Nietzsche’s philosophy a negative reputation in the English speaking philosophy community. I think that Nietzsche would have be horrified by the Nazis because he was more of a proto-existentialist.
Nietzsche refused to attend his sister’s wedding on the grounds that she was marrying an anti-semite, and admitted in one of his letters that the thought of his sister having sex with that man made him physically ill.
I think Nietzsche liked teasing people he considered to be his inferiors, and he did it by saying things that were easy to misinterpret. I think that’s at least in the neighborhood of playing the asshole.
Walter Kaufmann’s book on Nietzsche says that Nietzsche liked Jews better than Germans. My impression of Nietzsche was that he was trying to get at the roots of individual judgement and thriving (which I suppose in in the neighborhood of existentialism if you ignore the thriving part), and would have been revolted by Nazi collectivism.
I always understood Nietzsche’s references to Jews to be purely metaphorical. Their main purpose in the narrative is to convince the Romans to accept Jesus. That does not sound like any Jews that actually existed.
(I justify ignoring the debate in early Christianity over whether they were Jews by leaping ahead to their conclusion that they weren’t.)
Thus, I’m not sure whether Nietzsche’s writings give any useful evidence over whether he preferred Jews or Germans.
That’s a really good short paraphrase.