rkbabang

rk, I don't know about that. I think Munger himself said that Buffett would have been worth many, many billions more if he didn't have Berkshire and instead went the hedge fund route. Munger isn't always correct. The fact that the richest few men on the planet all own large portions of public companies and are not hedge fund managers makes me doubt that theory. Anyway even if it is true, being a hedge fund manager does not make you immoral and his reputation could have also have helped him in that endeavor as well. My point was that contrary to what many believe being an immoral crook and a jerk doesn't give you a long term advantage in life. Yes, morality is just something evolution put into our brains to help us survive, yes we can ignore those instincts if we wish, but that doesn't mean we are better off if we do. You keep asking why you shouldn't ignore your moral instincts to make yourself better off, I'm saying that if you do ignore your moral instincts for some short term gain you will not be better off which is why most people don't ignore them.

Wow, there's been a lot of posts since I've last been here. I just read through them all. One thing I think stahleyp is missing is that some people do have no empathy and feel no guilt, but they aren't necessarily better off than we suckers who do. Humans are social animals, the group is important for our survival. You might get away with screwing people over now and again, but for the most part you are going to give yourself a reputation of someone who can not be trusted and someone who others do not want to deal with. Maybe you feel no guilt and sleep with every woman you meet, but your wife is going to divorce you and take half of your assets. Maybe you screw over your customers, but you will shortly be without customers. Maybe you never go out of your way to help your neighbors, but when you need help you will be out of luck. Etc, etc, etc.... One of the most important assets a person has is his reputation. Yes, Warren Buffet is talented (and probably a little lucky), but his reputation also plays a large role in his success. Contrast this with, say Sardar Biglari, who may be also be talented, but will have a much more difficult time achieving massive wealth because of his reputation. Our ingrained sense of 'morality' may be just evolution's way to get us to 'want' to do what is in our long term best interest, as well as what is in the best interest of the group as a whole. Just as we have nerve endings so that our brain can cause us misery to prevent us from sticking our hands in the fire (how long would a human born without the ability to feel pain survive?), we have morals to prevent us from isolating ourselves from other humans.

I'm not sure what you are thanking me for, but you are welcome. I'm glad you found a way to manage you're problems. I read somewhere that a disproportional number of very successful people have had serious issues to overcome in their lives such as death of a parent when they were children or mental disorders, or learning disabilities, etc. These things may seriously inhibit most of the people who suffer with them from reaching their potential, but for that 1 in x case it is why they are successful. There is some truth to the old saying "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger". Oh yeah, and happy birthday!

I freely admitted that I don't understand it. Yet, your actions have consequences which effect other people regardless of what happens to be going on inside your head. Maybe someone who has been tormented by voices in their head for years can't be blamed for killing 5 people at a park on a Sunday afternoon, but that doesn't mean it should be considered acceptable. The fact is any culture which considers suicide a socially acceptable way to deal with depression has more suicide than other cultures. If you disagree with that, you should look into the issue a little more. You don't have to like it, but its true regardless of how that makes you feel. Yes, because killing people is totally an appropriate analogue to suffering with severe depression. Nowhere did I say that suicide is, or should be, socially acceptable. My point is that people who don't suffer from it have no idea how it feels, yet continually, as you've done, make assertions that convey a superior understanding. My only response is to look at the messages from both his wife and daughter. Nowhere do you see them claiming selfishness, just profound sadness. To me that shows a deeper understanding of the subject at hand. Rkabang, I am trying to be as gentle as possible. You obviously have no experience with depression or mental health issues. Maybe you should just cease and desist at this point. Now that is funny. I'd be shocked if there is anyone here with more experience. But I will stop here, because I am angering people.

As a matter of fact I hope I remember this thread when the 2014 suicide statistics come out, because I wouldn't be at all surprised to see an uptick in suicides directly following this high profile suicide where a much loved celebrity is getting all of this sympathy and understanding in the aftermath.

I freely admitted that I don't understand it. Yet, your actions have consequences which effect other people regardless of what happens to be going on inside your head. Maybe someone who has been tormented by voices in their head for years can't be blamed for killing 5 people at a park on a Sunday afternoon, but that doesn't mean it should be considered acceptable. The fact is any culture which considers suicide a socially acceptable way to deal with depression has more suicide than other cultures. If you disagree with that, you should look into the issue a little more. You don't have to like it, but its true regardless of how that makes you feel.

I agree, with a lot of what you are saying. In my view we have such a short precious amount of time in this life, the fact that some people want to shorten it for themselves even further is not even something I can imagine. And it is extremely hard to have empathy for someone when you can not put yourself in their shoes easily. That said, it is something that is done for personal reasons without much regard for how it is going to effect those who love you, so it is by definition a selfish act. Maybe an understandable one, but a selfish one, none the less. Like I said, it is just sad for everyone involved. Also it is absolutely a good thing to attach a social stigma to suicide. If you look at suicide statistics by country there is nothing that correlates 1 to 1 with high suicide rates, not gun ownership, not wealth, nothing. Why is the suicide rate so high in Japan? It is a cultural phenomenon. Anything you can do to make it culturally unacceptable can only save lives.

This is kind of how I feel as well. Not only the message he sent to others, but like anyone who does this, it is a selfish act completely disregarding the effect it will have on those who are closest to him and care most about him. Even thought the suicide rate isn't as high in the US as it is in some other countries, there are now more suicide deaths than traffic deaths in this country, it is just sad all around.

I think it would be a very good thing. I would love to see all those people doing something more beneficial to the civilization. I think this is a case of the broken window fallacy. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window Exactly. I'd much rather see them doing something constructive rather than destructive. Hell, paying them to dig ditches and fill them back in again, wouldn't be constructive, but at least it wouldn't be destructive, so it would be an improvement.

Saw this and thought of this topic: She's not a whore if she's an actress

Expanding on my last post. I don't think most organized criminal organizations care very much about the pot legalization efforts. That isn't really their money maker. Pot is bulky and hard to transport, it grows like a weed almost anywhere, and takes no special processing or chemistry to turn the plant into its usable form. Therefore organized crime is competing with every teenager who wants to plant a few plants in the woods behind his house and lot's of other small-time competition. With coke and heroin (and many other drugs) on the other hand you need a large organization to take that from where it is grown through complicated production processes, and into market in the U.S., yet these drugs are less bulky and easier to smuggle. This is where organized crime can add the most value and where it probably makes the majority of its profits. So with pot the only people with a lot to lose are law enforcement, the prison industry, and the alcohol industry. This is why that is where you see the opposition coming from. I think if there was ever a serious chance of all drugs being legalized in the U.S. you'd see organized crime getting involved in a big (VERY BIG) way. You'd see a ton of money being spent on political campaigns, outright bribes, and even targeted assassinations. It is too big an industry and these organizations have gotten extremely powerful and now have a lot to lose. It should have never gotten to this point, none of this had to happen. This drug war is completely tearing apart some countries (like Mexico). Anytime you interfere in the free market using force there are unintended consequences which you can't control.

That is the problem with allowing these organizations to get so big and powerful in the first place. Part of the drug problem in the first place was caused by organized crime finding something else to do after alcohol legalization. If alcohol was never illegal in the first place these organizations wouldn't have gotten so huge. If you legalize pot they will have to rely on harder drugs for their revenue, if you legalize all drugs something else will be found. Anything with high taxes (like cigarettes) are a possibility and anything that is still illegal (prostitution, gambling, ??). It is pretty hard for any large non-government organization to fund itself entirely by theft/extortion/etc, without a high demand product or service to offer on the black market in the U.S. where many people are armed and almost anyone who wants to be armed can be. Without the perceived "legitimacy" of government theft/violence/extortion/kidnapping/etc will only get you so far.

That's exactly right. Because alcohol is legal for those over 21, there is therefore no black market for alcohol. Therefore, it's harder for teens to get alcohol vs acid or coke. and yet the 21 laws is only because the federal government blackmails every state over it... but that's ok... Yep, just like they used to do with the completely insane 55mph speed limit.

It might disappear if it were legal. The guy lives in a bubble of "do goodness", and needs an outlet. When things are legal, they are no longer a naughty outlet. The dog however is not consenting and it's just animal cruelty at that point -- animal cruelty cannot be legalized. Teen binge drinking is probably worse when it's illegal. At least, I remember my Australian cousins being more responsible around alcohol than I was at age 18. People it seems get a thrill out of breaking rules. The drinking age should be reduced or eliminated, as with the driving age. Both of those have never made sense to me. All you do is drive teens to drink more or turn to illegal drugs as an alternative, because they become easier to get. I used to have to find someone to buy me alcohol in high school, but I could buy pot, mescaline, shrooms. acid, coke, or whatever else I wanted right in school. The driving age is insane, because you learn better when you are younger. I was illegally driving tractor trailers for my Dad when I was 13, as well as operating backhoes and excavators on job sites when I much younger than that. My kids (13 & 14) are perfectly able to drive a vehicle. They are as coordinated as they will ever be, they have as quick a reaction time as they will ever have, and they are both perfectly responsible. These decisions (alcohol and driving) should be left to parents not government.

"trying to arrange sex with a dog and an unnamed other animal on Craigslist" Huh? You'd think he's just go to the pound and adopt a dog if that is what he wanted, without admitting to people what he wanted to do with it. I guess you don't need brains or morals to be a preacher, just a big mouth and an ability to con people as dumb as you are. But back to the topic of prostitution, I'm thinking about maybe buying a few dogs and pimping them out to preachers in my area.

This makes no sense. Things can exist even if they are evolutionary adaptations. Anchoring bias is a heuristic programmed into us by evolution because it's quick and works in most situations we would encounter in the simpler society where our bodies evolved over tens of thousands of years. Is anchoring bias not real? Thinking is just an electro-chemical phenomenon that takes place in the brain, something that we can clearly observe with all kinds of equipment, and we can see how it changes or stops if we damage various parts of the brain. Yet thinking is still real. It doesn't need to be magical and supernatural to exist. Ethics are real, even if they only come from human thinking; just like love is real, even if all love would disappear if all sentient thinking disappeared too. Thousands of years ago, less sophisticated civilizations with no science to figure out how things work attributed everything to the supernatural, but we've moved passed that now; I just wish more people would realize it. There's a quote I like about all this: "Yes, you could say that it is all just a game evolution has programmed us to play, but it's an important game for those so programmed." +1 I'm still laughing about "It doesn't need to be magical and supernatural to exist". So true. Let's boil this down to the core of the matter. To the religious: 1) If it isn't supernatural it doesn't exist. Then someone comes along and tries to tell them: 2) The supernatural doesn't exist. Since things do exist they perceive the contradiction there. They interpret statement 2 to mean that you are claiming nothing exists, which is absurd. As Ayn Rand famously said contradictions do not exist, whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises, because one of them is wrong. It is obvious to me that statement 1 is wrong not statement 2.

I never saw that before thanks. I've always thought the characters from the Bible would make some good books or movies. It is clear that the most evil villain in the book is God (the Father) where the good guy is Jesus. A great plot would be if Jesus decided to make a deal with the devil (as a lesser of two evils) to team up and overthrow their common enemy (his a-hole father). Maybe there can be some drama as both sides try to win over the loyalty of the holy ghost. In the end it turns out that the Father, Son, and Ghost are just one being with multiple personality disorder which ends up killing itself leaving, Satan who turns out not to be such a bad guy (just misunderstood stemming from some of the bad things he did when he used to drink), with the universe all to himself. I remember reading a book a long time ago, maybe when I was a teenager or in my early 20s called The Jehovah Contract where a hit man was hired to take out god. I'm going to have to re-read it sometime, I remember loving it. Here it is on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/The-Jehovah-Contract-Victor-Koman/dp/0977764907

A few related interesting questions are Why do governments tax the market's favored way of returning capital to shareholders disregarding its negative effect on compounding value? or: If every public company started favoring cash flows over earnings and shunning dividends in favor of buybacks, would the government simply find a way to tax that as well? It could be just fatalism at work. The government is going to take its pound of flesh one way or the other.

I noticed that too. If that isn't an example of cherry picking data points to fit a preconceived theory I don't what is.

The problem with "shareholder value" is that too many people (including most corporate managements) interpret that to mean "short term shareholder value" and don't think long term. In the long term the shareholder's interests are usually in-line with the other "stakeholders" such as the management, employees, customers and community. The whole Market Basket situation is fascinating. I live right near a large Market Basket store and it is where my wife and I get the majority of our groceries. Every time we drive by there are a lot of people outside holding signs, this is with no union organizing them or forcing them to do this. We went in there once since the strike started a few weeks ago and it was a pretty sad sight. The produce section was completely empty of all produce, the meat section was almost empty (I'm sure it is completely bare now), and you could tell nothing else was getting re-stocked either. We weren't able to get most of what we needed, so we've been going elsewhere for our groceries and paying quite a bit more than we are used to. They had the best value for groceries in New England, the stores are nice and clean, they offer products that can't be found at most other chains, (like raw cheese, grass-fed cream, or Kerrygold butter), and the people there aren't, well, like the people of Walmart, yet the prices are reasonable. Our usual routine was to go to Trader Joe's every so often to stock up on things that we can't get at Market Basket and go to Market Basket once per week. Our spending on food has gone up noticeably since this strike has started.

You can't break the laws of physics. But you can have an incomplete understanding of those laws, which is exactly the situation human beings will always be in.

Why are we special? Aren't we also just animals. Further, why is that the "point"? What if my desire is to hook up with as many hot ladies that I can - regardless of the consequences of their emotional or physical wellbeing? Yes we are animals, but animals who are aware of our own mortality and aware of our own thinking. If there are other sapient animals who can communicate like we can, think about thinking like we can, and reason like we can, then no we wouldn't be any more special or valuable than they. If it is your desire to hook up with as many hot ladies that you can regardless of the consequences you could certainly do that, but I don't think it would make you happy in the long run, and I think you are intelligent enough to know that, even if you don't understand why. It is interesting that you believe that people are moral because they are religious, yet you admit that in your own case you chose to be religious because you were already moral and didn't understand why. Do you really believe that you are unique? That only you can have morals without religion and the rest of us need religion or else we'll go around killing, raping, and stealing? I think fear of others and their free will is a large component to why you want to support religion. Both religion and government have thrived over the millennia using the fear every man has of ever other man. The thinking goes: Sure I can be moral, but what is to stop everyone else from murder and mayhem? Sure I don't need government to control me, but who is going to control everyone else? Etc...

I agree it would be fun to watch. Slightly related to this topic (religion, Darwin, morality, etc) you might be interested in an article I wrote for the October 28, 2007 edition of The Libertarian Enterprise: The Market For Genes. I'd be interested to hear stahleyp's review of it.

That is your bottom line, not mine. As you pointed out in a previous thread, if only the gods know what is wrong and what is right, well, then you are just as clueless as I am. So you might as well use drugs and cheat on your wife - maybe the gods appreciate that after all! No way to know, right? Even if supernatural beings exist, we, humans, are all clueless regarding morality according to you. We'll only find out when we die. Not much different from the animal kingdom you love to refer to. However, you still won't visit a hooker because you have personal opinions about what is right and what is not. So do I. We still strive to act morally - regardless of what supernatural beings think. Something that you keep dismissing. Anyway, these discussions would be much more fun if a radical muslim showed up arguing, using your line of reasoning, that it's ok to marry 12yr old girls and to stone a woman to death if she's unfaithful. You couldn't claim the moral highground anymore and would be forced to find a better line of reasoning. Sure, he could still claim the moral highground, he'd pullout the old "My god is better than your god" argument. Followed of course with "Nah, nah, na-nah, nah"

Please stop with all the evolutionary references. I respect your views on social issues and I agree with most of them. If you don't like people going to hookers, fine, but don't try to rationalize things by fitting them in your self-constructed moral framework, where, if you don't believe in your specific god and your specific values then it's ok to murder your boss, cheat on your wife and inject your baby daughter with heroin. Your line of reasoning on morality is outdated, egocentric and doesn't stand up to scrutiny, as several people tried to explain to you in previous threads on similar issues. Besides that, your constant references are a very childish way to end any productive discussion. "You don't agree with me? You must be a barbarian living in the animal kingdom ... ". Right. Some people have a more nuanced view of what's right and what's wrong. They try not to listen to their gut feelings (like those in the animal kingdom ;)). writser, that's the thing. I've thought about this a lot and I think Eric will agree. There is no "true" right and wrong. All of our brains are wired in a certain way and we don't control the original wiring. Our evolutionary instincts are just that. Some people are wired to steal others are wired to sacrifice their lives for a stranger. Neither is better or worse. They are simply different. The bottom line is this: if there is no deity, there is nothing that is moral or immoral. Actions are simply that: actions. We can glam it up and say "well if it causes harm, it's bad." That's arbitrary though. We can say we "reason" and that's why we do certain things. Indeed, even that is arbitrary. One person may "reason" almost anything. I have no problem with anyone who is a deist, theist, agnostic or atheist. I do find it a little puzzling when they aren't logically consistent though. That goes even when a Christian is for the death penalty or an atheist grumbling about social rights. If life is valuable, then even a person on death row has value. If we really are just stardust, don't expect people to get up in arms about people dying in a foreign country. Morals aside, legislators could take a hypocratic oath to "do no harm". Policies that lead to an increase of human trafficking of sex slaves could be seen as doing harm. Or you could organize society around a first principle such as: "No person or group of people has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being for any reason whatever; Nor does any person or group of people have the right to delegate the initiation of force to anyone else."* *(Adapted from: Who is a libertarian?)