Recent comments in /f/philosophy

Shield_Lyger t1_jebj3h8 wrote

> Pretend you’re a disembodied soul and can end up absolutely anywhere in the world, and in any body. Now what if you’re the one with a debilitating disease, or you’re the parent to the child with one, and you’re too poor to access this service.

Then you're in the same situation that you would be in if the service had never been created. The presumption that no lives should be improved unless all lives are improved strikes me as vapid. Ridding the world of opportunity is not a good solution to the problem of opportunity hoarding.

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Silent0n3_1 t1_jebhw1o wrote

I don't have to pretend. A member of my family has a child with a debilitating disease, and she goes through hell while in the hospital with him. We all still love him and support her as much as we can while watching both of them go through hell. That's what most families do. I have no idea what the wandering soul parable has to do with anything that touches real lives other than to obfuscate with abstraction.

As far as being "left behind," yes, that is less ideal as we extrapolate in time the effects when compared to the group lucky enough to have first access vs those who don't. But that is also just empty moral finger wagging.

To condemn those who were able to take the first doses of antibiotics or vaccines that became available as "unethical" because there were groups in other countries that didn't have them available at the same exact time is empty of any real criticism. Maybe to deny them access is what you mean. That would be immoral.

The hope, I would think, is that this technology is allowed to grow and become more cost efficient so that, one day hopefully sooner rather than later, those "left behind" will also be able to have the choice to engage with this technology. That it is cheaper, safer, more effective, and thus able to become more widespread.

Also, note the wording of "choice." The choice to engage or not. Just like vaccines, who have plenty of superior moral fingers wagging at the perceived opposition in regards to the existence and utilization of that technology.

Do we regret my family experience? No. He is a gem that we love and care for. But if we could even just lower the possibility of it happening to others in the future? Then unequivocally, the answer is yes.

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PragmaticBodhisattva t1_jebbroo wrote

This is how I feel about AI technology right now, too. What happens when those with capital have access to AI to boost their economic output, and everyone else who might have been working more menial jobs are replaced by AI? This has been haunting me recently, especially with AI companies firing their AI ethics teams…

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TuvixWasMurderedR1P t1_jeb91yd wrote

I don’t see why the Gattaca/eugenics parallels are “drivel.”

Put yourself in that Rawlsian “veil of ignorance.”

Pretend you’re a disembodied soul and can end up absolutely anywhere in the world, and in any body. Now what if you’re the one with a debilitating disease, or you’re the parent to the child with one, and you’re too poor to access this service.

Or let’s say you were born already several generations into this gigantic social experiment, but you happen to belong to a line of people who had been “left behind” by this technology, as it were. What are the real implications for living as a member of that biological underclass?

Are those lives that can sincerely said to be better off because of this?

Why is being critical of this technology “rolling the dice,” but its uncritical embrace is somehow not also a gamble?

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TuvixWasMurderedR1P t1_jeb7w0l wrote

What about concerns about wealth and access to this technology, and the further implications about generating a whole biologically inferior underclass of humans in a few generations?

This feels very eugenics-y to me.

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Agamemnon420XD t1_jeb1qbl wrote

There are no ethical problems, there’s just narcissists crying about progress.

One day, my disease, UC, will be gone, and the ‘culture’ and lifestyle habits surrounding UC will also be gone. It will be amazing, and anyone who says losing your culture for the sake of objective progress is a ‘bad’ thing is a fucking narcissist and I hope they suffer, because they’re standing for the suffering of others.

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Alone-Quail4915 t1_jeaz541 wrote

Interesting, to make an absolute statement like that about a God or deity is impossible you should’ve instead said which I don’t believe does. Further implications come into play when thinking about the value of life of someone with one of those diseases and whether or not they have the same value or right to life as someone without it. Thats where the moral and ethical issues come in not necessarily because you believe in a god.

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PragmaticBodhisattva t1_jeap1vo wrote

If only the rich have the ability to be screened for diseases, that puts those who can’t afford this at a massive disadvantage. The inequity would be stark. I have a disability due to chronic illness and I am treated as sub-human by (far too many of) those with the means to be able to afford treatments etc. Disability payments allow for next to no quality of life. This would be disastrous if only those with wealth could access it.

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Used-Phase9016 t1_jeanp54 wrote

>he laments that most philosophers think of the sub-discipline of ‘philosophy of education’ as an academic slum occupied by intellectual mediocrities who produce dull and unsophisticated work.

I mean, the problem is, this is right. Most philosophy of education being produced is not worth reading. It tends not to attract the best and brightest... which is a self-perpetuating pattern.

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XanderOblivion t1_jeajya8 wrote

Thank goodness someone is saying it. It needs to be said more, and louder.

An significant portion of philosophy is utterly irrelevant precisely because it fails to address human development. Even Existentialism, which seems to attend to development across a lifetime, rarely dwells with any seriousness on childhood. Kristeva's "subject-in-process" is perhaps the only model I've ever encountered that begins in childhood and considers learning and its systematization across a lifetime with any concordance with lived experience, physiological/neurological development, and interdisciplinary validity.

And this piece itself is rather limited, despite its claim to open up a much wider definition of "education" -- are we talking only about that which is systematized through public, communally funded institutions? Or are we also talking about churches? And the family home?

Learning and Education are not the same thing. Learning is an inevitable feature of the organism; "education" is a byproduct of managing a community of organisms.

It should also be noted that "Philosophy" itself, in the history of education, is today largely a dissociated branch of an older education system, the Trivium, occupying the space where Logic used to be found against its partners Grammar (Linguistics) and Rhetoric (Language Arts). Philosophy will have to contend with itself as an artifice of systematized education, which mainly and merely reifies itself within that system.

This article presents too limited an overview of the history of education, its developments, and the relationship between classical structures and more recent ones -- which is to say nothing of its fascistic and economic purposes in generating national identities and reifying power and capital. If attended through philosophy alone, it would be pointless -- psychology and sociology here are vastly more central to the issue, nevermind political science and biology. There is no such thing as "intelligence," for example -- IQ, as a measure of intelligence, is a byproduct of the standardization of the education system, not a natural phenomenon that the education system surrounds. And this objectification of intelligence is what produces the system that itself produces the concept of "abnormal" psychologies that are wholly systemic byproducts (things like ADHD and Giftedness).

G-factor, for example, is a fascinating example of how statistical output measures of the education system become translated into a priori conceptualizations of learning for that very system, closing a loop. G-factor is used to validate the quality of intelligence measures, but it is itself a product of measure of performance on intelligence measures... The mirror regards itself.

And at the core of education and learning is the issue of consciousness itself. If the leading theory of the day is Kastrup's Analytic Idealism, we're all in trouble. He would observe very quickly that the entire "dashboard" concept is a post-pubescent developmental feature of the mind, perhaps wholly a product of the later development of the prefrontal cortex. The mind is not the "mind" that the Kastrup discusses until late in neurophysiological development.

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Silent0n3_1 t1_jeadbvq wrote

Does anyone commenting here have kids? Genuine question.

Let's say a number of embryos and their prospective parents had the ability to lessen the chance of a debilitating disease of the one chosen for fertilization. By making that choice, is that equivalent to increasing the likelihood of the flourishing of another human being?

If, once in the throes of an opioid induced overdose, does it remove the personal choice and individuality of the victim, who has a percentage chance of recovering "naturally", to apply a Narcan treatment to reverse the effects? Does it affect the outcome of future human evolution to choose to treat that person?

It smacks of pro-life "It's God's will" arguments then paired with the naturalistic fallacy of "violating genetic evolution" to say no in these scenarios. Wearing glasses for short sightedness is a violation of genetic evolution. If you wear them, you should be dead from a predator already and not be able to have kids. Does anyone here wear glasses or contacts?

The argument of "insidious capitalism" is the tool that will lead to the Gattaca scenario is drivel as well. Will there be unscrupulous actors? Yes. In every system, in every environment, capitalist, socialist, communist, etc. there are always bad actors. In Soviet Russia, athletes were routinely doped, and it was state sponsored by a communist regime. So much for capitalism being the only source of evil. At least you are given the choice rather than having the state choose for you.

I have had friends who went through the process on this very subject, and none of the drivel brought up was ever a part of the process or even a concern. The parents knew it was only a probabilistic decrease of their health concerns and not a guarantee. They also knew that of the 2 kids they had with it, one was a "better quality" embryo than another. Both kids were born anyway and are enjoying a happy family life. The "better quality" embryo is in more trouble on a daily basis than his brother. Go figure.

If I had the choice to screen my future possible embryos as a choice I would do so because I have also seen what it is like to have a child born with a debilitating genetic disease, and if a choice could be made prior, or the risks lowered, it is a no brainer when presented with the reality of that choice. From the child suffering in the hospital treatments and anguish of the parents seeing their child suffering while it is happening, to the economic consequences of the entire family losing the college money of siblings to afford the treatments for the afflicted child. If these arguments were to be believed, the family would not give these treatments because "Gattaca!" bs. But they do, because we're human and love our children regardless.

How about posing this way - if you had the choice of possibly lessening the suffering of other human beings through knowledge, would you deny yourself that choice? Would you just say, "meh, that's nature for you" to just roll the dice without trying to get a better outcome?

And then, if you could lessen the possibility of your own child suffering through knowledge, would you choose to do so? Or would you just say "I'll roll the dice, because if my child suffers, that's God's plan."

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ctrl_alt_excrete t1_jea67s0 wrote

It was, but the implications are similar. Essentially, this process would likely only be available to those who can afford it, leaving those with lower incomes to actually become objectively inferior to the upper class and furthering to enlarge the already huge class divide.

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AdditionFeisty4854 t1_jea49bc wrote

what are you bro!!!
I am enlightened by your words and had this belief since long.. It seems to me I myself is messaging your philosophy as mine.
Thank you.
I am greatly impressed that you told nothing is before time and also after it.
It also seems this nothing you tell is but the synonym of everything
Each and every object, pieces in this 4D cage (universe) we dwell is but a complex illusion of nothing. We conscious being (as you told) moving with time and intention perceive this nothingness as everything.
Now why, that I told nothing is everything ?
For this, we have to find what is truth of existence, the absolute truth
In my views, truth is about change.
Truth of existence for me is two - destruction, leading to creation and again ; with everything in between

>Also, please say some more about how everything comes from nothingness..
I would like to read your statements more

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