Their Fault, They're Female

A new variant of FML has just popped up which is called “My Fault, I’m Female”. It’s worth subscribing to.

I think I just found out my new favourite blog. This new kid on the block just popped up in the internetubes and in their own words:

This is a space to share stories of gender discrimination, pay gap disparity, denial of rights, and inequality. It can be in the workplace or outside it, but keep it short, include as much detail as you can, and when commenting let’s remember that solidarity is the key. If someone made you feel like it’s your fault you’re female, this is the place to fight back.

Long live the women who refuse to shut up.

Fuck Yea I say to that!

I went through their initial stories and some of them truly made me RRRRAGE, especially the kind of blatant harassment and sexism that goes on in the workplace.

This is definitely a nice addition to the blogosphere, lets hope they stick around. Now y’all go subscribe to it.

New Socialist on the block

An infrequent contributor to the site has decided to open his very own blog. Lets give him some exposure.

Orgthingy, the infrequent contributor to the Division by Zer0 has decided to take the jump and open his own blog, self-hosted (it seems) and everything. His new site, called Red Side, is still fresh from the paint but there’s a few articles already there. So go and check it out and lets welcome the new member of the Blogosphere.

Planet of Anarchy

The Division by Zer0 has joined the Anarchoblogs, a new planet centered around Anarchism. This is my introductory post to it.

Anarchism
Image by anarchosyn via Flickr

I have just joined Anarchoblogs ((h/t to Rad Geek – he goes into more details on this, check it out!)), a new aggregator focusing on all kinds of Anarchism (yes, even the oxymoronic “Anarcho”-Capitalism) who took over after the previous such attempt stopped being updated. This is basically the same thing as Planet Atheism but for Anarchism but further than that, the person behind it has interesting plans for the future.

As anarchism can fall anywhere from the left to the right of the political spectrum and with members all over the world (primarily outside of english speaking countries), the owner decided to create various hubs which can be separated by interests or language (initially, in the future there are plans for location specific ones etc). At the moment there’s only a few of them and I have been added to the english speaking hub.Of course, the main site displays all content from all hubs together.

I find that this separation into hubs is actually a good idea and perhaps Planet Atheism can copy it and organise Atheists to specific groups, to make the whole thing more manageable and allow the members to subscribe to only the topic that interests them.

So this is my introductory post for Anarchblogs and also a way to spread awareness to all who might have anti-authoritarian, anti-statist leanings. If you fall low on the y-axis on the political compass, then you should consider joining as well.

How come the Division by Zer0 has joined you might ask? Well, the more I read, the more I learn of how much Capitalism fails and also how much the modern state is designed to protect the interests of the wealthy. I find it impossible to avoid sliding towards the libertarian left more and more. And since lately I’ve been blogging especially much about Capitalism and Communism it seems like a good place be.

For those of you who might discover the Division by Zer0 from there, welcome and I hope you enjoy your stay. I won’t ask you to subscribe as you’re probably be seeing my writings through the aggregator, however I thought I might post a few of my older posts with Anarchism related content.

I have generally had not much presence from anarchists around here (unlike AnCaps to my dismay) so I’m hoping that this might present me with some views from a different perspective than usual.

Here’s to a brighter future and to more voices raised high.

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It seems that I have made some waves…

Oh shi– A recent post of mine was linked from Mises.org and now I’m being swarmed by Misoids!

Rant in E-Minor album cover
Image via Wikipedia

It seems that my latest post refuting the Austian refutation of Marxist exploitation theory has been noticed by none other than the official mises.org blog. The reaction was only to be expected.

I provide to you a sample of AnCap civility for your amusement 😉

This guy admits he’s no economic or marxist sholar, yet he’s calling our theorist hollow!? What a moron!

No, I said that your system sounds hollow. Learn to read?

He also has a laughable article on his site trying to debunk Rothbard’s “Egalitarianism as a Revolt against Nature”

The only laughable thing about this article is Rothbard himself really. What a douchebag.

Yawn. Another crank. Let him “refute” to his heart’s content. Just more nonsense to ignore for me

Not bored enough to write a comment about it obviously. But I also got the crank title at least.

Like most marxoids dedicated to proving that capitalism is evil because if the worker didn’t work for a wage the worker would starve, the role of the people who actually sell food is mysteriously overlooked.

Marxoid? Ok Misoid, I do not ovelook the role of people who sell food at all. If they are the intermediary for selling the item, then they simply pay the worker for the food he produced. Their labour is the act of selling and they should get to keep the full suplus value they create with that.

In short, this moron does not know what he is talking about.

Thank you. Hugs and kisses back.

The site also seems to have been designed to make reading a chore, irritating like chalk on a blackboard.

Does my mother smell of Elderberries too?

Who gives a damn if some commie loser wastes his time jostling with chimaeras he made up?

Who indeed.

So there you have it. And this is simply the product of half a night’s gnashing of teeth. I can’t wait to see what more beautiful gems of indignation I’m going to receive.

All is not bad though, I already had 2 civil comments so there is hope that not all AnCaps are twats. Nevertheless, I’m glad I put up my warning to them yesterday. It might reduce the number of inane comments I get.

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This scoutle thingy

I am just trying out scoutle which I discovered from some random blog. Apparently it is a new service that aims to automate bringing people who might be insterested in your content, to your blog. It does this by tracking the number of visitors along with a sort of social networking where people who find each other interesting form a scoutle connection. Between these two, you get a rating. There’s also the automated scout involved which you get to personalise and give a nice name and quote (Meet the Void Seeker)

From the information:

Every time you get a visitor to your website (it does not have to be a Scoutle user) we will allow your Scout to walk two times, which will allow your Scout will meet other Scouts that are promoting their websites. The system will try only to find interesting Scouts for you to meet, based on interests, networks, connections and more. The number of Scouts your Scout meets depends on the number of visitors to your website. Also, don’t forget that when you have a visitor on your website, two other Scouts will visit as well, using the Stage you have installed.

It’s all a bit complex on first read so I didn’t understand how it works very much but since it’s automated and all I thought I’d give it a go and see what it does.

If you’re interested, give it a go and if you find the Division by Zer0 interesting just add me as a contact in scoutle. I’m curious to see what this thingamajib does.

What I’m not certain of is if the flash widget should be as visible as possible or out of the way. At the moment I’ve placed it on the bottom of my bottombar and out of the way. It means that it will load for people visiting but they are unlikely to notice it. If they are supposed to click it however, maybe I should be placing it on my sidebar.

Unfortunately my sidebar is only visible from my single post pages so someone visiting my homepage or a static page will not see it. I’m also not certain if having it appear twice (sidebar and bottombar) is a good idea :-/

Religion Awards Coup

In the last few days I’ve been trying to raise awareness in the Atheosphere, to the fact that the Bloggers Choice Awards are in progress and more specifically, that we do not have any Atheist or irreligious presence. Indeed, last year, all the top positions of the “Best Religion Blog” category where taken over by Christians and this year seems to be turning out very much the same.

Thus I took it upon myself to attempt and remedy that.

Initially I nominated some of my favorite Atheism blogs but even though I tried to notify the people running them in order to place some banner or inform their readers, I was largely ignored. I even tried emailing Pharyngula, who apparently loves crashing polls, to let his readers know. But there was no response…

Nevertheless, I then had a better idea: This year, not only should we attempt to get an Atheist Blog to the top of the Best Religion Blog category, but we should do it in the most extravagant way possible. To this end, I nominated The Antichristian Phenomenon as I don’t think there’s a better way to be more “in your face” than this 😉

The ACP is, of course, not the only blog I’ve nominated and ever since I’ve started writing about this, many others have joined me and nominated their own choices. This does not hurt as at all since you are allowed to vote as many times as you wish.

Below you will find a list of all the relevant blogs that are currently nominated along with possibly other links of interest. If you don’t want to visit all of these one by one, just head over to my profile and you’ll see them listed in an easy-to-vote format.

Currently the ACP is the one leading in the Religion category and it’s my personal choice for the top, just because of the LULZ that will ensue. However I do not mind if some of the more heavyweight ones surpass it. I’ve voted all of them up in any case. Unfortunately we still have too few votes. To achieve the top we need at least 250 votes and we have only managed to gather 20 by now.

If you like this idea and want to help further than that, then there is another way: Spread the word.
Currently I’m pretty much the only one pushing for this and I just don’t see any excitement. I am aware of the “Herding Cats” problem plaguing the “Atheist movement” but seriously, this is ridiculous. We can’t even waste 5 minutes doing a symbolic action?

Anyway, the best way to spread the word would be, of course, blogging 🙂 Currently only the Psychodiva has made a small mention of this but I’m certain that if people larger than me talk about it, it will trigger the necessary reaction.

Another way would be to mention it in your own groups. I’v already posted this in The ACP Forum and the newly fledged Atheist Nexus. If you’re at any other place with Atheist presence, consider making a post similar to these and if you have more rights, sending a simple PM to all members to let them know.

Lastly, if you are a nominee, consider placing the Brag code widgets in your sidebars to let your visitors know to lend you a leg up.

Let the Religion Awards Coup begin!

Definition of Agnosticism

So my recent verbal spar with the Socratic Gadfly moves on. It seems that due to the linkbacks I made to Austin Cline and Adrian Hayter, they were apparently curious enough to see what the post was about and ended up defending my position on Gadfly’s blog (appreciated).
This in turn triggered him to contact me via email and also write about it on his second blog.

During our email conversations, Gadfly did have a more amiable attitude (albeit a bit condescending occasionaly) and we managed to have some progress in finding out exactly what the gist of our disagreement is. In turns out that it is a simple definition issue on the word “Agnosticism” and I will attempt in this post to explain.

Now, I guess the secod post of his was written while tempers were still high and this is why the language is still a bit strong.  Since I have been unbanninated already, I think there’s no point in feeding the flames any more so I’ll keep a more respectful tone.

Gadfly maintains that Agnosticism cannot be logicaly combined with theism. Indeed, by looking at some of the analogies he made on email:

“Agnostic theism” is like “Democratic Republicanism” and “theistic agnosticism” is like “Republican Democratism.” (Allow the neologism for the noun parallel.)

It is obvious that for him an agnostic theist is an oxymoron.

As I mentioned in the previous post. The etymological meaning of the word is “Without Knowledge”. Agnosticism however does not define what you do not have any knowledge about but it is commonly understood that it is about deities. One could very well argue that he is agnostic about abiogenesis or the creation of the universe and that would be a perfectly acceptable phrase.

As pertaining to theism however, agnosticism can easily take one of two common definitions.

  • One can be agnostic about the existence of god(s). This classifies them as Agnostic Atheists. The defining quote would be “I don’t know if gods exist
  • One can be agnostic about the nature of god(s). This classifies them as Agnostic Theists and the defining quote would be “I don’t know what or which gods exist“.

The difference is small but significant. On both of these definitions, one could even apply various scales of knowledge. Thus an agnostic atheists can verge closer to atheism with “I don’t know if gods exist but there is no reason to believe that they do” and an agnostic theist can approach a religion “I believe the Christian god exists but I don’t know his exact nature (and thus follow no denomination)” – an Agnostic Christian (The group I think most liberal Christians really belong to).

Due to the open nature of the word “Agnostic”, many people default it to either of the two cases described above. In my personal experience, I’ve had far more people who thought of “Agnostic Theist” when hearing “Agnostic” – which is, incidentally, why I started calling myself simply Atheist in the end. This is also why in the article that triggered this approximately half the agnostics go either way.

And this is where I believe Gadfly is wrong. He defaults to “Agnostic Atheist” but he then takes it a step further and asserts that his take on it is the correct one (and gets annoyed that others use it differently).
This is what I have been trying to explain via email but we seem to have reached the “Agree to dissagree” point.

The thing is, at the end of the day, what matters is that we know what we are talking about. It does not matter a bit if we call someone as “Agnostic Atheist”, “Agnostic”, “Fideist” or even “Purple Banana” as long as we are understanding the same thing. It is a fact that just “Agnostic” can mean different things to different people. And by definition, these people are correct.

All we can do when uncertain is simply ask: “Theistic or Atheistic?”. It’s certainly no reason to get upset about.

PMOG: An unforeseen boon to the atheosphere.

Fellow Atheist, did you recently notice a sudden flux of visitors from blog posts that are not seemingly linking to you? Is so, this is because I’ve been playing around with a new online game and I’ve chosen some of your articles, that I consider interesting, to insert into the playfield, so to speak.

But even if you were not one of those few bloggers who’s posts I’ve chosen for my initial experiment, please bear with me and read the rest of this post. It might be interesting to you.

What I’ve discovered is a very new and fresh on-line game which does something novel. Instead of making players actively participate in the game, like all othe browser games, and as a result require a level of attention that not everyone can afford; it turns the concept on its head and makes the whole internet the playing field. This name of it is PMOG and I think it might have the capacity, if used right, to help the blogosphere and especially the atheosphere, become both more contextual and fun.

I will not go into the details of what PMOG is or how it’s played but I want to explain why it has such a potential.

if you set aside than silly mine pranks and random fooling around with friends, the game’s true power appears in the form of missions. Basically what missions are (at least currently) is a collection of links to various pages in a serial format, along with a short description provided by the player who built the mission. This seemingly simple concept, allows something that is sorely missing.

You see, we currently have so much content produced every day that it is night impossible to find the truly interesting posts.The atheist blogroll is closing to a 1000 active blogs and it will only keep growing from there. I’m currently subscribed to almost all the blogs in the blogroll through an aggregator and I have to wade through a lot of uninteresting and repetitive posts every day just to find one or two that say something worth reading (for me).

Yes, I’ve prioritized a few blogs where almost everything written is interesting but I truly feel that there are underdogs out there who’s thoughts remain untapped while the big hitters like Pharyngula draw all the attention. Sure, places like Challenge Religion and the Carnival of the Godless help to cut through the mud, but their posts always seem disconnected from each other.

My idea then, is to use the mission capability of PMOG in order to create ad hoc “carnivals” that follow a theme and can also provide a customised commentary from the organiser in the form of pointers or clarifications.

This will have two effects that I can initially see:

  • We have cohesive groups of posts that do not depend on a computer algorithm or people belonging to the same group. Thus I may have a mission about ethics and link to people who are members of the atheosphere (generally Atheist blogroll or Planet Atheism) along with ones who are not but have something relevant to say and most of us would miss.
  • Given enough of us participating on this and allying with each other, we can push our missions to the top of the pile. This provides us with access to eyes we could not reach before.
    Already, one mission on morality that I’ve created which hit 4/5 stars rating, generated 50 hits to my article which is almost as much as a CotG. If you consider that this game is still very very new and attracts people outside atheism as well, there is true potential to increase readership on the articles that are worth it.

Now, this is just the tip of the iceberg as well. Using items like portals for example, we can utilize our distributed power to create a network of relevant links. Imagine for example someone visiting the Expelled official website and the first thing that pops up is a 5-stars Expelled Exposed portal that the owners of Expelled cannot remove. As the popularity of the game increases, this can only grow more powerful for us, which is an even better reason to join in early.

Currently most missions are the random favorite sites each player has which just as fun (AKA not) as surfing on del.icio.us and makes the overall quality very low. I believe that if we can start improving this quality through the blogosphere, with better descriptions and interesting (underground or not) articles, we can easily take over.

Finally consider that the game can only become more interactive as time goes on. It will not be too long until we can create missions with riddles, votes and whatnot.

In any case, this was my little idea for the day. You can see the two initial missions that I’ve created as a proof of concept. For them, I used the items I marked as shared and starred in my google reader (It pays to do that sometimes).

Hopefully, I’ve managed to convince at least a few of you to try this out just in case it’s worth it. In case you do, please add me as an ally so that I am aware of you and we can run & rate each other’s missions.

One last thing. Currently the game is under a lot of load from a recent sudden popularity hit so you might run into the occasional slowness or outright failure. Also, I failed to mention it until now but it requires Firefox and a special extension in order to play it.

Yet more hypocricy from Objectivists

Once below I found myself bothering with things that I should have known better not to.

Trying not to get into a detailed history of this:

  • Evanescent wrote an article
  • Alonzo Fyfe (AKA the Atheist Ethicist) tackled it which prompted Evanescent to come to the thread and whine. After failing to discuss (or read Alonzo’s follow up article) he wrote a new post as a reply asking Alonzo to discuss there. I was explicitly not invited.
  • Evanescent and his band of Randians were eviscerated by the Barefoot Bum in Evanescent’s blog as well as commenters on Alonzo Fyfe’s post.
  • At some point, Evanescent made the following statement (in regards to Barefoot Bum): “If he wants to win this argument, he only has to name another ultimate value other than life”. This prompted me to attempt to give single reply. If it was banned, fair enough, I expected as much.

However, it wasn’t blocked but allowed through and actually replied to. This, to my feeble and “irrational” mind seemed as an invitation to explain my position.

How much of a fool was I to expect even a shred of integrity from Randians. After my subsequent replies were left in moderation limbo for a day, they were eventually deleted (I cannot see them anymore as pending).

Since I expected this from the beggining, I decided to save my replies just in case so that perhaps I can continue the discussion with anyone interested, and also to display, once again, the hypocricy of Randianism.

Following are my replies as it would have been after this comment.

  1. db0 Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.

    Why would one avoid pain?

    Why is pain undesirable?

    Because it makes life unpleasant.

    And it is better to have as pleasant a life as possible.

    I gave you an ultimate goal. This means that there is nothing following it and the purpose of this goal ends when it is realized. It is not, as you state, to make my life better. It just is.
    I can explain why I consider this an ultimate goal, but this will not reveal life as an ultimate goal.

    >Because it make life enjoyable to live. Pleasure is the physical/emotional reward for achieving one’s goals. But to what are these goals directed?

    …The avoidance of pain
    You see that this is a circular argument? My goal is not to have no pain, not to live. Life is my means, a tool that I use in order to have no pain.
    I have no choice on using life or not. My choices only affect my life in the future and for that, I have the goal of avoiding pain.

  2. Ergo Says:
    “Desire Utilitarianism has a very good explanation of what rights are, does Objectivism have anything along similar lines?”

    Actually, DU has a very poor description of rights and Objectivism certainly does not have anything along similar lines. DU is capable of only pointing at a *general* phenomena and ascribing to it the term “rights”–which is not only incorrect but also circular. The argument is circular because it merely uses different forms of the same argument to support the idea that rights exists.

    For example, rights exists because generally people have many and strong reasons to encourage aversions to action X. Without all the unnecessary jargonistics, this is the same thing as saying rights exist because people want rights to exist. Well, but why do people want this to be the case? How did most people get those many and strong reasons? How did those reasons originate? What is their basis and is it univeral or cultural or subjective? And what about the few people who do not have those many and strong reasons? What about those who don’t simply care about this either way?

    DU is perhaps the silliest thing I have encountered that purports to be a philosophy; at its root, it is deeply confused about whether or not it is a philosophy based on determinism or free will. It insists on the objectivity of ethics but has no epistemological foundation or theory of concepts that demonstrates this objectivity; indeed, it appears that DU is epistemologically relativistic at best and subjectivistic at worst.

    WRT Objectivism, it is simply not proper and not feasible to try to convince you of the Objectivist theory of rights on an internet forum. Rarely do people engage in online debates to be persuaded wholly about an opposing view; mostly, it is to bum-troll around looking to get into someone’s hair like a stubborn piece of gum or win debating brownie points on cyberspace.

    Primarily, personal and self-motivated study is the way to changing your views and exploring something new. So, if you’re truly interested in learning about the Objectivist theory of rights (and Objectivism in general)–and not simply engaging in fruitless online debates–then read the relevant books.

  3. Ergo Says:
    “name another ultimate value other than life”

    “Absence of pain. Physical and emotional.”

    Absence of all pain would in fact destroy all meaning in valuation. It would be detrimental to our lives–we would not know what has survival value in relation to us and what is a threat. Pain serves many different, important, and often life-sustaining functions. Pain can be an indicator of the nature of our actions–whether they are good or bad for us.

    In an other sense, imagine your loved one is brutally mutilated by a thug right before your eyes. And then you don’t feel pain; perhaps, you don’t feel joy, but you neither feel pain–just indifference. Then, in what meaningful sense do we talk about valuation and emotional responses to values? How do know what is of value to us and what is not? Given our human nature, we experience our valuations through our emotions (emotional pain or emotional pleasure). With the absence of pain, one of the most important indicators of a healthy life will disappear.

    So, no. Absence of pain cannot be an ultimate value. It is in fact important in the service of a truly ultimate value, which is life.

  4. Mark C. Says:
    Why would one avoid pain?

    Why is pain undesirable?

    Because it makes life unpleasant.

    And it is better to have as pleasant a life as possible.

    Why?

    Because it make life enjoyable to live. Pleasure is the physical/emotional reward for achieving one’s goals. But to what are these goals directed?

    I’ll give you clue: L__E

    There are two different types of responses to a “why” question: one about the conscious intentions of an agent, and one about mechanisms.

    Objectivism defines “value” as something along these lines: some thing or condition that an agent acts to gain and/or keep. Now, let’s analyze this definition with respect to both types of answers to “why” questions.

    Under the intentional answer, eating for pleasure, eating to rid oneself of hunger, and eating to give oneself energy for doing known or suspected future tasks are values. Picking up sand on the bottom of my shoe when I walk on the beach is not a value (nor is the sand).

    Under the mechanistic answer, anything I gain and/or keep, as well as anything I could gain and/or keep by doing whatever action I’m doing at any point in time, are values. Under this answer, that sand I mentioned is a value. Yet this is absurd and trivializes the notion of value, making it next to useless.

    From this analysis, it can be seen that the Objectivist definition of value must reasonably answer the intentional “why” question, not the one I have labeled as “mechanistic”. So, why is pain undesirable? The answer could be “because it just is undesirable” or “because I don’t want to feel bad”. But with the intentional reading of the “why” question, the answer can not be, or at least almost never is, “because it is detrimental to my life”. An intentional answer can not be reduced beyond the issue of consciously known desire, as far as I am aware.

    Your answer was pretty good up until you answered the question “but to what are these goals directed?”. It is there that the equivocation on “value” pops up, where you switch to the non-intentional reading of the “why” question.

    So life can not be an ultimate value if it is not first a value, and no one, as far as I am aware, consciously holds just being alive, even if unable to do anything, as a value. Clearly, then, it is not the case that every person’s own status as being alive is of paramount value to them. A person’s own life is, at the very least, an instrumental value–it is valuable because it allows one to pursue other values. So one’s own life is a value by the Objectivist definition, but it is only, in general, a means to achieve other ends. Staying alive, then, is almost always, if not always, instrumental. But we can not say that it is an ultimate value. We can, however, say that it (the status of being alive) is a necessary prerequisite for valuing anything. This does not make it an ultimate value under the intentional notion of “value”.

  5. Mark C. Says:
    I didn’t separate the quotation from the rest of my post there. The quotation should be from the first line through the one ending in “L__E”.
  6. Ergo Says:
    “Staying alive, then, is almost always, if not always, instrumental.”

    This is not only false, it is impossible. Metaphysically, life is a given. Metaphysically, life is always self-directed, self-generating action (in plants and animals, including humans). To be an instrumental value, one must be able to act in such a way as to acquire, gain, and keep the value in order to achieve higher, more important values. But this is impossible because life is already given–it is already acquired, it already exists. Your actions prove that you are alive. Hence, it is impossible to acquire the value of life for instrumental purposes.

    Life as an ultimate value recognizes a very specific set of requirements: that one must act to acquire, gain, and keep all values that serve the purpose of our life qua human being. Since life qua man is the goal, Objectivism provides the unifying framework for all of man’s actions by defining life as “self-generated action” and man’s life as “goal-directed action.” (Man’s life is “goal-directed” in the conscious sense of the term, because we volitional beings could even choose to commit suicide. Animals exhibit goal-directed action as well, albeit to a limited degree, with the goal being survival.)

    Metaphysically, man has one goal, one end–-to live as proper to his nature. Ethically, man has to choose his ultimate goal. Objectivism recommends that man choose his own rational happiness as the moral goal of his life. This recommendation is premised upon a long chain of metaphysical and epistemological analyses.

    Objectivism regards happiness as not only possible but also the *proper* state of man’s existence on this earth. To that ethical end–which is justified on a metaphysical end, Objectivism builds a framework of moral rights that safeguard the conditions possible (the means) for the achievement of that end and ennumerates a series of values and virtues that are necessary means to achieving that end.

    In both cases, the end is the individual–the man; metaphysically, his life; ethically, his happiness.

  7. db0 Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.

    Absence of all pain would in fact destroy all meaning in valuation. It would be detrimental to our lives–we would not know what has survival value in relation to us and what is a threat. Pain serves many different, important, and often life-sustaining functions. Pain can be an indicator of the nature of our actions–whether they are good or bad for us.

    This is not what I mean when I say “absence of pain”. The goal is not to reach a status where I’m incapable of feeling pain but rather to achieve a situation where I feel no pain at the current moment. Pain might very well return at a point in time but that only means that my ultimate goal reappears and I have to strive to achieve it once more.
    The absence of pain is, pretty much, a goal that you achieve and lose many times during your life and always strive to achieve again, right until the point your life ends.

    Once again, I am not going into the specifics of “Why” I consider this goal the ultimate. Only, as Evanescent requested, providing an ultimate goal other than life.

  8. db0 Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.

    To be an instrumental value, one must be able to act in such a way as to acquire, gain, and keep the value in order to achieve higher, more important values

    How do you assert this? There is no such need as far as I can see. A value is instrumental because it is used as an instrument for another value. There is no necessity that it be “acquired” or “act in order to keep it” (although you do need to act in order to retain life).
    Any such characteristics that you assign to “instrumental values” are of your devising and you need to provide empirical evidence to support them.

Of course after such a blatant display of silencing their opponents, I would be very wary of ever commenting on a place where they moderate. I know that Barefoot Bums trackback was deleted as well so I can only further guess that any opinion they could not refute has been conveniently moderated away. It is no wonder why other commenters are staying as far away from their comments as possible.

It also furtheronly reinforces my suspicions that if ever an Objectivist was placed on a position of political power, what followed would be a suspencion of freedom of such magniture that only Scientologists would be able to surpass it.