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/sci/ - Science & Math

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5622781

Anonymous Tue Mar 19 17:38:33 2013 No.5622781 [Reply] [Original]

Hey /sci/. You guys have the more interesting brains on 4chan (ignoring /b/ of course). Lets do a thought experiment.

Imagine you're walking down the street and you come across a rock on the side of the road. Being the sadistic twisted person you are, you decide to start torturing the rock. Slicing it up with your plethora of knives and what not. Is this considered immoral? (disregarding the fact that the very essence of torture is to cause harm).

You're walking down the street, same scenario, except you encounter a stick on the ground. Would it be immoral to torture this stick?

You're walking down the street when you encounter a tree. You break off a stick of the tree and perform said previous acts. Is this immoral?

You're walking down the side of the street and you encounter a live lizard. You perform said previous acts on the lizard. Is this considered immoral?

You're walking down the side of the street when you encounter the Tail of a lizard that has already fallen off. You can assume the lizard is alive and has already grown a new tail. Would it be immoral to perform said previous actions on this lizard's old tail?

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 19 17:39:19 2013 No.5622784 > all dat science

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 19 17:40:17 2013 No.5622788 >>5622781 >morality >science yeah... nah ur a cunt

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 19 17:48:32 2013 No.5622804 >>>/phi/

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 19 17:49:19 2013 No.5622812 >>5622804 >which is why I posted here Cmon /sci/, why are you nerdy guys always so insecure? Afraid I might... disprove your logic? ;)

>>

Anonymous Tue Mar 19 17:51:33 2013 No.5622819

Imagine you're walking down the street and you come across a rock on the side of the road. Being the sadistic twisted person you are, you decide to start torturing the rock. Slicing it up with your plethora of knives and what not. Is this considered immoral? (disregarding the fact that the very essence of torture is to cause harm).
>no
You're walking down the street, same scenario, except you encounter a stick on the ground. Would it be immoral to torture this stick?
>no
You're walking down the street when you encounter a tree. You break off a stick of the tree and perform said previous acts. Is this immoral?
>no
You're walking down the side of the street and you encounter a live lizard. You perform said previous acts on the lizard. Is this considered immoral?
>yes, killing it no but torture yes
You're walking down the side of the street when you encounter the Tail of a lizard that has already fallen off. You can assume the lizard is alive and has already grown a new tail. Would it be immoral to perform said previous actions on this lizard's old tail?
>no

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 19 17:54:47 2013 No.5622828 Absurd and vapid emo role playing fantasies belong on >>>/r9k/. There you will hopefully find similarly asinine and deranged individuals.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 19 17:55:17 2013 No.5622835 >>5622781 'Harm' can only be quantified on what it can express to you, this is why nobody gives a fuck about what corporations do and neither do they

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 19 18:00:48 2013 No.5622846 >>5622819 But why?

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 19 18:16:49 2013 No.5622881 >>5622846 not him, but... No, I have studying to do, this thread is just inane.

>>

Anonymous Tue Mar 19 18:22:17 2013 No.5622890

>>5622846

On second thought, w/e.

"Torture", "subject of torture" and "evil" aren't just words that get strung together to determine if an action is bad, bad is what emerges from the context and properties of all these objects together.

Cutting up a lizard's dead tail is morally neutral because there is no person or animal receiving the pain, there is no brain or other substrate connected to conscious experience that receives pain or other suffering. Same with a stick and a rock. A tree is essentially an organic machine, for moral purposes, making it the same thing.

A lizard on the side of the road has a brain, (or other substrate which provides consciousness), and thus feels the pain inflicted on it has suffering, so the action is morally "bad".

>>

Anonymous Tue Mar 19 18:26:33 2013 No.5622894

>>5622890
Precisely; This is the purpose of the experiment.

Now imagine humans have tails and we have the capability to detach said tails.
Lets say you're walking down the street and for whatever reason, you lose your tail.
The next day you're walking down the same street looking for your old tail (you've already grown a new one by now). And you see some random guy torturing it.
How would you feel?

You would feel as if he is degrading your own personal property; even though the tail is no longer yours or even living material. You might even go as far as to claim that man doing the torturing is being immoral.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 19 18:29:47 2013 No.5622898 >>5622894 That would be an impulse, yes. However, I think it would be more appropriate to reflect on the importance of picking up my dead flesh off the side of the road, if its that important to me.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 19 18:31:03 2013 No.5622907 >no >no >no >yes >no

>>

Anonymous Tue Mar 19 18:31:19 2013 No.5622911

>>5622898
Just for the sake of the thought experiment man.

It could be an analogy for a car you own. It is an inanimate object, it does not feel pain. Yet if someone were to purposely beat it up, you (the owner) would feel bad because it was Your property.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 19 18:34:02 2013 No.5622925 >>5622911 Feeling a bit railroady here, but I'll agree to that premise. Captcha: asplant plant

>>

Anonymous Tue Mar 19 18:35:33 2013 No.5622931

I think it goes something like this: Morals are like a framework of rules embedded in the human brain. It's like a few basic rules of what you shouldn't be doing, or what's probably a bad idea. I think it probably evolved when early human societys formed. These rules always relate to other humans! The rules were learned from experience "trial and error" because morals werent programmed in the human brain at first, anything was ok. So humans did anything and everything, but they found out that some things weren't good. Like for example killing your tribesmen: Bad idea. Eating shit: Not good. Causing a tribesman lots of pain: Bad, since you know yourself how pain feels! It's horrible, so you don't want your tribesman to feel horrible. Now the reason we apply it to animals like the lizard for example, is that it's similar to a human. It has two eyes, legs, (hands?), a body and a mouth, it probably feels pain just like humans do. We can draw parallels with humans, and therefore our "morals" apply to the lizard as well. Something activates in our brain "Man, impaling this lizard on a stick probably is a bad idea".

You can see why this won't apply to a tree, a rock or a stick. They don't look like humans, so our "morals" don't activate when we torture them.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 19 18:39:34 2013 No.5622953 >>5622931 moral is a social construct

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 19 18:41:02 2013 No.5622962 >>5622931 I like this.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 19 18:44:47 2013 No.5622973 >>5622931 lizards dont have a conciousness

>>

Anonymous Tue Mar 19 18:48:03 2013 No.5622999

ITT: people trying to figure out what morals are because there is no definition.

Morals are agreements among people as to what is pro-survival (the greatest good). 'Torturing' a tree doesn't make any sense...but if you are on someone's property fucking with their tree, it's probably not cool. There's a gradient scale involved.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 19 20:09:33 2013 No.5623238 >>5622999 >there is no definition >goes on to give a definition u wot m8

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 19 23:20:49 2013 No.5623722 >>5622973 OH they do all right

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 19 23:24:49 2013 No.5623728 >>5622781 it's immoral to cause emotional harm physical harm doesn't matter if the thing being harmed has literally no emotions at all

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 19 23:27:32 2013 No.5623734 >>5622907 >>5622819 >no >no >yes >yes >no fixed

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 19 23:35:02 2013 No.5623748 No No No Yes No Don't torture living things. The tail isn't living, it's just fresh meat.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 19 23:57:19 2013 No.5623793 screw morals if it advances science then its worth it.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 19 23:59:18 2013 No.5623797 >>5623793 Get this man a prize. I nominate you for the next president of the United States.

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 20 00:00:02 2013 No.5623798 >>5623728 That's why it is not considered immoral to kill people who are comatose.

>>

Anonymous Wed Mar 20 00:27:33 2013 No.5623837

I honestly don't really know what morals are, is it what society views as being wrong or is it what you personally view as being wrong?

I don't really think anything at all is evil/ wrong, a wasp laying eggs in a living caterpiller is doing it to reproduce and is evolutionarily successful and not evil, a person who steals money from charities and uses it to support multiple families is evolutionarily successful and not evil. The only acts that I think could be considered evil are acts that serve no purpose to anybody and may impede people slightly, however this could likely include art and a range of inane activities that I find interesting simply because they exist, torturing I suppose could be considered evil provided you don't enjoy it and didn't learn anything from it, if you enjoy torturing something then it is ok.

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 20 05:45:50 2013 No.5624216 >>5622781 Yes Yes Yes No Yes Living things are the cancer of planet Earth. Also torturing rocks is horrible. I had a pet rock once. Torturing trees? You sick fuck. Fingerboxes are made from that stuff.

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 20 05:47:19 2013 No.5624218 >>5623734 disgusting smelly hippy stoner libertard detected

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 20 11:08:32 2013 No.5624533 >>5622781 Go back. To >>>/b/

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 20 11:23:50 2013 No.5624566 >>5622781 Please go to /lit/ for philosophy.

>>

Anonymous Wed Mar 20 11:59:03 2013 No.5624636
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>>5622781

I consider any being that follows the cephalization trend to be a concious form of life and therefore "sacred" by some people's standards.

torturing a fucking rock is not immoral
torturing a fucking stick is not immoral
braking a tree branch and torturing it is not immoral
torturing an animal is immoral
torturing the tail of a lizard is not immoral.

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 20 12:06:32 2013 No.5624648 >>5624216 what the fuck you pussy how do you rationalize that shit "muh feels" >>>/x/

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 20 12:07:47 2013 No.5624655 >>5624636 faggot if you wanna prohibit vivisection gtfo sci. antiintellectual plebian shitbag

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 20 12:21:50 2013 No.5624689 >>5624655 lol. excuse me? please point out where in my post I claimed to prohibit vivisection. >calling me anti-intellectual >misses my point completely mmk. i guess if you want to put words into my mouth.