Simon Paynton

It’s nihilistic.  Many of them fantasise about shooting up shopping malls.

Unseen wrote:
That said, nowadays avoiding women as a legal strategy makes a certain kind of sense.

It all sounds like a philosophy of life for people who don’t like themselves, or who don’t realise we only get one chance at life, or something like that.  Don’t they want to be happy, and have a nice life?  I think if they were genuine people, r…[Read more]

I think that Tom Leykis doesn’t like women.

Unseen wrote:
If anyone can find those statistics, it’d be great. I can’t find them.

Here are some studies on “dissatisfaction in marriage”, they might have the stats you’re looking for.  I think the picture is comp…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
This guy used to make a living out of practical dating for guys whose main goal is getting laid:

It seems like a very cynical point of view.  I don’t see how that guy will ever be happy – indoor shades or not.

Jake – it can be, if other things are valued above human life and welfare and avoidance of suffering.

TheEncogitationer wrote:
Visual confirmation that Religion and Morality are two very different things:

If these people are religious extremists, and not just criminals, then I think this is a case of sacredness of an overriding principle or idea leading to committing evil in other ways.

In other words, if something has infinite value, then other…[Read more]

Billy Graham’s wife Ruth was very nice apparently, she took the writer Patricia Cornwell under her wing and saved her bacon, when she was a troubled little girl, showcasing the best of Christianity.  That’s why Cornwell wrote her biography.

I think it’s a lot easier to trace the broad-strokes of what has been, than to predict what will be.  There’s probably a mathematical theorem that states it would take more resources than there are in the universe.

Reality is chaotic and contingent.  So are we in some ways.

I can see the logic in determinism – that we are now a complete p…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
More true is that everything that happens on the level of human experience happens due to proximate causes, not due to The Big Bang.

It’s also shaped by evolution.  Evolutionary psychology recognises two kinds of motivation: ultimate and proximate; or, evolutionary pressures and psychological pressures.  Ancient humans said, “I n…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
My cat can choose to eat the food I put out or, in her kitty cat way, tell me she wants something else. So, by the standard you are using, my cat must have free will and then be morally responsible for killing mice.

What about when your cat tries to decide whether to go out or not?  They can spend ages trying to make their mind…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
For the ones involving deliberation even the deliberation just happens in a sense. If I say “Choices just happen and I don’t know how the brain does it,” that doesn’t really scream “free will” to me.

Well, just because we can’t explain something, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

We all have our choices limited to more or less extent…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
If free will is false or makes no sense whatsoever, how can we hold people morally responsible?

Some people are not held morally responsible for crimes because they were mentally ill: they have diminished responsibility and their rational freedom of choice was impaired.  Some people have personality disorders: should they be blamed…[Read more]