Barbarity in the USA! (Sung to Springsteen's memorable hit)

[Sava]

I have a few different theories.

1. This could be a form of youthful rebellion. "Oooh look at me, I'm so edgy. I don't believe human life has value." Perhaps an attention seeking behavior.

2. Because he's a smart guy, perhaps he feels the need to have a more "intelligent" belief system because, well, he's just so smart! That's also a form of being edgy and contrarian. "Oooh I'm so smart. I thought out my belief system and came to the conclusion that human life has no value. Look at me. I'm so smart." Also, attention seeking.

3. His "beliefs" could be a symptom of an underlying neurological issue. I know Lori struggles. Whether congenital or as a result of trauma, it doesn't matter. Also, it could be that he has a personality disorder of some type. Again, the cause is irrelevant.

Sometimes, physics, math, and engineering types are unable to think in any other manner beyond what makes them good in those respective fields. They use thought processes inappropriate for the subject of morality because they are simply unable to think any other way.

I can't say for sure. These are just theories.

[Lorizael]

L seems to think that human life has no intrinsic value, so anyone can do what they like to anyone else and there's no moral dimension to that.

Dimension is exactly right. People can build ethical frameworks for how they want to deal with other people/humanity/the world (I certainly have), but to me that is essentially orthogonal to any concept of morality.

This existential crisis appears to have scarred his existence.

You've got it backwards. I was super depressed in high school for various reasons and spent a lot of my time trying to come up with ways to "save" the world from what I believed were various evils and injustices. I was, at that point, already scarred. I was a ****ed up kid, but it had nothing at all to do with my philosophical beliefs and much more to do with mundane **** like being bullied, being lonely, not knowing how to ask for help, reacting poorly to situations that required effort, etc. Summer 2003 was a low point for me emotionally and being super depressed led to some pretty standard nihilism. My response to said nihilism was a series of philosophical revelations that led to me figuring out just what the **** I'm supposed to be doing with my life (other than ending it). Those revelations gave me structure. For a long time, though, I was still pretty ****ing depressed, so that structure existed mostly in my head and didn't bleed over into my actions (except for me writing a couple megabytes worth of philosophical hoo-ha and telling people how wrong they were about everything). My life does have structure now, though, and my philosophy directly informs the direction of my life.

[Sava]

I mean, if it helps and you aren't about to go on a shooting rampage, then I support it. But your amoral approach to human life is despicable and, quite frankly, ungrateful. Humanity has given you everything. But if having no respect for the lives of your fellow beings is what you need to do for yourself, I won't troll you about it.

[Sava]

Much

[Lorizael]

I have a few different theories.

1. This could be a form of youthful rebellion. "Oooh look at me, I'm so edgy. I don't believe human life has value." Perhaps an attention seeking behavior.

2. Because he's a smart guy, perhaps he feels the need to have a more "intelligent" belief system because, well, he's just so smart! That's also a form of being edgy and contrarian. "Oooh I'm so smart. I thought out my belief system and came to the conclusion that human life has no value. Look at me. I'm so smart." Also, attention seeking.

Human life not having value is not a defining feature of my philosophy. I concluded that the natural universe does not contain information about the value of its contents; human life just happens to be one of the contents of the universe. On a surface level, my sort of thinking doesn't differ much from other people's. I have reasons for wanting to build a more awesome human civilization, just like (most) everybody else. The difference is I don't believe there is any inherent value in doing such a thing, and I don't believe doing it is for the good of humanity itself. I simply have another goal.

3. His "beliefs" could be a symptom of an underlying neurological issue. I know Lori struggles. Whether congenital or as a result of trauma, it doesn't matter. Also, it could be that he has a personality disorder of some type. Again, the cause is irrelevant.

/me shrugs. No mental health professional has ever suggested this was the case. I used to think I fit a diagnosis of schizophrenia, but that was definitely a trying to be edgy thing.

Sometimes, physics, math, and engineering types are unable to think in any other manner beyond what makes them good in those respective fields. They use thought processes inappropriate for the subject of morality because they are simply unable to think any other way.

I came upon my philosophy long before I was a "physics, math, [or] engineering type." My philosophy in fact led me in this direction. But despite always having an interest in science, I was definitely more liberal artsy as a kid (which survives now in me still being a writer).

[Lorizael]

I mean, if it helps and you aren't about to go on a shooting rampage, then I support it. But your amoral approach to human life is despicable and, quite frankly, ungrateful. Humanity has given you everything. But if having no respect for the lives of your fellow beings is what you need to do for yourself, I won't troll you about it.

I'm quite grateful for what humanity has given me and have a great deal of respect for my fellow beings. I just don't believe those feelings are related to the concept of morality.

[Sava]

The order of such things is irrelevant. Whether your brain wiring produced your belief system first and then you gravitated toward that field later doesn't matter for the purposes of my evaluation

[Sava]

I'm quite grateful for what humanity has given me and have a great deal of respect for my fellow beings. I just don't believe those feelings are related to the concept of morality.

As a human being, the fact that you don't believe my life has inherent value seems very ungrateful.

I think we are approaching this from different angles. You, I suspect, are talking about value in a universal sense. I'd perhaps agree with you on that. I'm speaking in a relative sense. That value is something that we as a species have invented.

[Lorizael]

If that's the page you're on, then I think we're on the same one. As I said, for example, what Hitler did was bad for humanity; i.e. anyone who wants to make human civilization more awesome should not be a fan of what Hitler did. But in a universal sense, as you say, no, I don't think his actions mattered.

[Lorizael]

I mean, psychologically speaking, if I didn't value things things, I would perform no actions and die. So it's clearly empirically false to say that I don't value things. But that doesn't mean I think my values are important/universal in scope.

Edit: x-post

[Dr Strangelove]

Wouldn't it be great if we could just banish criminals to an alternate reality?

[Lorizael]

Wouldn't it be great if we could just banish criminals to an alternate reality?

Yes!

[Sava]

Maybe this is that reality

[I AM MOBIUS]

I dunno, why am I here? I declare miscarriage of justice!

[Lorizael]

I have a few different theories.

1. This could be a form of youthful rebellion. "Oooh look at me, I'm so edgy. I don't believe human life has value." Perhaps an attention seeking behavior.

2. Because he's a smart guy, perhaps he feels the need to have a more "intelligent" belief system because, well, he's just so smart! That's also a form of being edgy and contrarian. "Oooh I'm so smart. I thought out my belief system and came to the conclusion that human life has no value. Look at me. I'm so smart." Also, attention seeking.

For reasons that aren't entirely clear to me, I feel the need to add something here. Your theories don't track with my actions historically. After I formulated my philosophy in 2003, I talked about it with the people close to me because I wanted them to know what I believed. Reactions were almost universally negative. For a guy who was lonely and trying to make friends, this was a pretty disastrous result. I learned the lesson that expressing my beliefs does nothing but generate antipathy. If I had wanted to seem edgy or contrarian, I might have kept doing it. But instead I stopped. irl, excepting a couple people (one friend, previous girlfriends), I don't discuss my philosophy with people I know, and I never discuss it with people I don't know. I do it here, every once in awhile, because the consequences online are relatively mild. Otherwise I keep it to myself. I have only to read over old chat logs of my friends yelling at me about how stupid and evil and arrogant my beliefs are to remind myself why I don't do it anymore.

(This, btw, is one possible narrative for the events around that time. Another is that I was still seriously depressed and consequently very angry. This anger seeped into interactions with my friends, who were unable to contain their frustration over my depression while I was being a dick to them and responded by attacking my beliefs, because the alternative was attacking me personally.)