• Middlebury College Bans Energy Drinks, Linking Use to Alcohol, 'High-Risk' Sex
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[QUOTE=Headhumpy;49888532]Ah I see what you mean now. I thought you meant "personal" and "own" in the general sense. Broadly speaking, I think the best action for anyone to take is the one that maximises total utility (that is, utility for oneself as well as utility for all others). But it’s not necessary to take this action (more on this later). It’s also complicated by the fact that sometimes (indeed often), utility to oneself often comes at the cost of utility to others. Two examples come to mind. Smoking makes me happy, but second-hand smoke makes others unhappy. Stealing makes me happy, but it obviously makes the victims of theft unhappy. Yet we allow smoking in society (to some extent at least) but prohibit stealing. Why is this? There seems to me to be a spectrum of "wrongness”: in some situations, negative utility to others can be tolerated, but in others it cannot. Society thus collectively draws a line at certain actions, implying that actions that cross this line produce enough negative utility that the positive utility of the action is cancelled out. This produces a societal concept of "right" and "wrong", and "wrong" actions become those that are specifically prohibited by law. Unfortunately this presents a difficulty: if someone values freedom of choice very highly, their view of what is the highest utility choice will be different from that of someone who values societal good more. In other words, “right” or “wrong” may vary from person to person depending on how much they value their own well-being. Perhaps there’s some sort of “buffer zone” where net utility may be negative for some but positive for others, but we err on the side of caution and allow such things anyway. One such situation that comes to mind is the consumption of alcohol, where family members of alcoholics experience great negative effects from it, but many others derive much enjoyment from it, so we allow it (with some restrictions). This still seems very fluffy to me and I don’t quite know how to resolve this yet so I will have to sit on it. To answer your question proper, I don’t think that someone is necessarily doing something wrong by choosing a non-ideal action, unless that action leads to significant harm to others. Of course this is very situational: smoking indoors in the presence of an asthmatic is probably wrong, but smoking outdoors in the wilderness doesn’t really harm anyone else (unless you start thinking of increased prevalence of lung cancer among smokers which leads to them putting strain on the healthcare system, but that’s a whole other can of worms). Much like you, I generally lean towards weighting personal freedom more highly, so to use the buffer zone described above, I allow for a fairly wide zone for most activities. If it sounds like I'm contradicting my older posts, it might very well be the case as I haven't thought about this seriously until now, so my views might actually have changed over this discourse. I also like to play the Devil's advocate and take up positions I don't necessarily agree with for the sake of argument.[/QUOTE] If you don't mind, I would like to focus on an extreme example that does lead to significant harm to others because you've specified that that's the kind of choice where a person could necessarily make an objectively wrong choice. Let's take Stalin and the absolute horror that he inflict on those around him in his pursuit of power and control. If I've correctly understood your second to last paragraph, then you would consider his choices to be objectively wrong because they clearly result in much lower total utility. The amount of death, suffering, etc. far outpaces the good experienced by Stalin and his friends. Here's the part where I'm not quite understanding your full position: on what basis are you selecting total utility as a good thing that ought to be desired? Let us say that a person simply doesn't value the good or bad done to others, like Stalin in my example. In their mind, their actions have very high utility because any good done to themselves has infinitely more value than any harm done to others. Now, I understand that you would disagree with them on their utility calculus. You would put a lot more value on the utility of others alongside yourself, but are you able to make a compelling argument to a person like Stalin that they ought to value others more highly? If so, please lay out the basic form that it might take because I'm having trouble with it. If not, then aren't you holding something like other's utility as a fundamental moral assumption just as much as I was holding freedom as a fundamental moral assumption? I'm failing to see the distinction between our views if this is the case beyond what assumptions we make. [editline]7th March 2016[/editline] Also, let me say, that I have so much respect and appreciation for your honest discussion. My goal is clarity above all else. [editline]7th March 2016[/editline] [QUOTE=HumanAbyss;49888576]It, to me, can't be called a "Nanny State" unless the "state" part is true.[/QUOTE] I guess we disagree, then. It's a good thing that semantical arguments are irrelevant to the greater point, though. The word that we use to describe certain parts of our argument means nothing once the actual argument has been explained. Like I said previously, I switched to the word 'paternalistic' in order to be more clear. [QUOTE]In this case, it's not at all and it's entirely up to them to decide what they're comfortable selling.[/QUOTE] I've never disagreed with this.
[QUOTE=sgman91;49888809]If you don't mind, I would like to focus on an extreme example that does lead to significant harm to others because you've specified that that's the kind of choice where a person could necessarily make an objectively wrong choice. Let's take Stalin and the absolute horror that he inflict on those around him in his pursuit of power and control. If I've correctly understood your second to last paragraph, then you would consider his choices to be objectively wrong because they clearly result in much lower total utility. The amount of death, suffering, etc. far outpaces the good experienced by Stalin and his friends. Here's the part where I'm not quite understanding your full position: on what basis are you selecting total utility as a good thing that ought to be desired? Let us say that a person simply doesn't value the good or bad done to others, like Stalin in my example. In their mind, their actions have very high utility because any good done to themselves has infinitely more value than any harm done to others. Now, I understand that you would disagree with them on their utility calculus. You would put a lot more value on the utility of others alongside yourself, but are you able to make a compelling argument to a person like Stalin that they ought to value others more highly? If so, please lay out the basic form that it might take because I'm having trouble with it. If not, then aren't you holding something like other's utility as a fundamental moral assumption just as much as I was holding freedom as a fundamental moral assumption? I'm failing to see the distinction between our views if this is the case beyond what assumptions we make. [editline]7th March 2016[/editline] Also, let me say, that I have so much respect and appreciation for your honest discussion. My goal is clarity above all else. [editline]7th March 2016[/editline] I guess we disagree, then. It's a good thing that semantical arguments are irrelevant to the greater point, though. The word that we use to describe certain parts of our argument means nothing once the actual argument has been explained. Like I said previously, I switched to the word 'paternalistic' in order to be more clear. I've never disagreed with this.[/QUOTE] Using total utility as a basis for choosing a course of action is an axiom in my line of thinking. The "person" making the judgement (note: judgement, not decision) is an objective, unbiased, outside observer who views the action from the point of view of all involved. In the example of Stalin, the observer looks at Stalin gaining lots of utility from his actions, then looks at the millions of people suffering from his actions, and decides that those actions are bad. Of course, this assumes that the people feel like they are suffering at all. If they have been so brainwashed as to think that they are living in some kind of utopia despite their actual situation, it might very well be the case that there is nothing wrong with Stalin's actions. This feels inherently wrong, but it's the only logical conclusion. Maybe I'm missing something here. I think both of us are looking at the situation using our own lenses and coming to similar conclusions. You weight actions by the amount of "freedom" they generate or take away, I weight actions by the amount of "utility" they generate or take away. It might be the case that we're just using different terms for the same concept. [editline]8th March 2016[/editline] [QUOTE=Ricool06;49888764]No personal attack, your method of conveying your view in this discussion is flawed, I am bringing it to your attention. If you were more consistently correct, there would be no issue. There is no state actor in this situation, therefore no "nanny-state".[/QUOTE] He used a poorly-worded phrase to refer to the concept, get over it.
[QUOTE=Headhumpy;49889768]Using total utility as a basis for choosing a course of action is an axiom in my line of thinking. The "person" making the judgement (note: judgement, not decision) is an objective, unbiased, outside observer who views the action from the point of view of all involved. In the example of Stalin, the observer looks at Stalin gaining lots of utility from his actions, then looks at the millions of people suffering from his actions, and decides that those actions are bad. Of course, this assumes that the people feel like they are suffering at all. If they have been so brainwashed as to think that they are living in some kind of utopia despite their actual situation, it might very well be the case that there is nothing wrong with Stalin's actions. This feels inherently wrong, but it's the only logical conclusion. Maybe I'm missing something here. I think both of us are looking at the situation using our own lenses and coming to similar conclusions. You weight actions by the amount of "freedom" they generate or take away, I weight actions by the amount of "utility" they generate or take away. It might be the case that we're just using different terms for the same concept.[/QUOTE] Sounds good, I agree with your conclusion. The only disagreement would be that you weigh by the amount of mental and physical harm as opposed to "utility," but I assume that's what you mean by utility. So it's not really relevant. Thanks for the interesting discussion.
[QUOTE=sgman91;49889895]Sounds good, I agree with your conclusion. The only disagreement would be that you weigh by the amount of mental and physical harm as opposed to "utility," but I assume that's what you mean by utility. So it's not really relevant. Thanks for the interesting discussion.[/QUOTE] I define utility as personal happiness or satisfaction, so mental and physical harm is automatically factored in, I guess. Thanks for the discussion as well.
[QUOTE=RenegadeCop;49887330]Sugar content mixed with caffeine. All three of those are awful, but energy drinks are the worst of the three. It takes a LOT of sugary food to match up to an energy drink. And 3[B] cans a day is nothing when it comes to drinks.[/B] [/QUOTE] 3 fucking cans of energy drinks? 99% of people don't do this. Also, who cares if it's bad, it literally doesn't matter
[QUOTE=RenegadeCop;49892281]It does if it harms you. What do you mean it "[I]literally[/I]" doesn't matter?[/QUOTE] Because every other kind of cheap shitty processed food is also bad for you so singling out energy drinks is stupid as hell.
[QUOTE=phygon;49893865]Because every other kind of cheap shitty processed food is also bad for you so singling out energy drinks is stupid as hell.[/QUOTE] What are you talking about There are processed foods without loads of sugar and caffeine and corn syrup this is coming from an energy drink connoisseur
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