In that having this conversation is better than not existing.
That’s axiomatic. Arbitrary, if you prefer.
Why is it better?
Look, I get that you prefer to live and don’t want to die. You share that trait with 99% of the human race. But the only reason you do is because you have an instinct to live. You didn’t rationally choose to live, your instinct to live was hard-coded into your brain by your creator.
Why do you prefer to eat cupcakes and not freezing cold gravel? Your body was designed by evolution to eat cupcakes and not gravel, hence you prefer cupcakes to gravel. So what? There’s nothing objectively superior about cupcakes, except the fact that the human body can extract nutrients from cupcakes but not gravel, and so humans evolved receptors to sense sugar, and a brain that interprets the sensation of having those receptors stimulated as pleasant.
Same thing with living vs dying. Only what you don’t understand is that normal human beings have an instinct to protect their offspring, because parents who didn’t care if their children lived or died had fewer offspring than those who cared for their young. Humans who figured out how to live in groups and treat each other fairly survived and had more offspring than unpleasant jerks. And this is why normal human beings think you’re insane, because you’ve disregarded your programming. But if you really disregard your programming you won’t care if you live or die, will you?
You’re just disregarding your instincts to act like a decent human being because you’re a jerk. Your parents were the kind of parents who didn’t care for their child, and passed those traits on to you either by nature or nurture. So is it so surprising that nobody likes you? If you cared about avoiding unpleasantness you’d observe the way normal human beings act and try to fit in, if only to avoid angry mobs following you around throwing rocks at you. It turns out that there are lots of people who are huge jerks like you, only they hide it better because they don’t want the hassle of everyone hating them, so they only engage in jerkiness when they think no one is watching.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/misc.php?do=whoposted&t=723924
I just found this interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a pit thread about another poster with quite as varied a list of posters. Like, the sheer number of people who’ve offered posts to this thread along the lines of “this guy is awful” is absolutely amazing. Smapti may be the single most abhorrent, hated poster on this entire fucking forum. And that’s fucking saying something!
This particular conversation is worse than death.
Because it is. I can’t help you if you want me to explain why life is better than death.
I don’t know what creator you’re talking about, but the fact that that decision is inherent renders it superior to any voluntary choice I could possibly make in life.
I am aware of that instinct.
Correct.
If I had disregarded my programming, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Yeah, I heard that a lot in seventh grade.
#ItGetsBetter
I’ve not found angry mobs throwing rocks at me to be a problem that occurs very often in my life.
You should get out more.
It’s how he avoids those rocks… and any form of reasoned insight.
This is an absurd statement even by your standards (which is saying something). By this “logic”, the fact that people are hard-wired to like the taste of sugar demonstrates that someone who shoves candy into his face all day is making a choice “superior” to that of someone who eats a balanced and nutritious diet.
But in order to do so, people must put themselves at risk – and you refuse to do so. If nobody ever put themselves at risk for another, we’d never be able to help kids like that. Don’t you understand that?
Nah. Dude’s got nothing on Joe Cool and Jersey Diamond. Now THOSE people were absolutely disgusting.
Now I’m reminded of a scene from the Justice League episode “A Better World”, featuring an alternate-universe team of “Justice Lords” who took over their world For Its Own Good:
I started a thread on Friday when I learned about my uncle getting a death sentence diagnosis (Creutzfedlt-Jakob Disease). CJD apparently eats holes in your brain and then you die. He died Monday morning, just three days after I learned of the diagnosis. He was expected to live for a couple of months. That he didn’t was a good thing, not bad.
His dying wasn’t a bag of Halloween candy to be savored and parceled out piece by piece.
Smapti, you seem to be seeking control by embracing authority. It won’t ever work. Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. We can’t hear the falconer because there isn’t one.
jsgoddess, I’m so sorry to hear of your uncle.
I’m also sorry for your loss, js. Just remember, when idiots like him spew bullshit like that, it’s always more about their warped view of the world than it actually is a comment on reality.
The rocks are, like, a metaphor, dude.
Nobody likes you because you’re a horrible person. The behaviors you think are so logical are causing you suffering, not pleasure. So stop being such a jerk, and you’ll find that for some reason when you’re not a colossal asshole people don’t hate you nearly so much.
For example, take your Waylon Smithers level sycophancy to anyone in authority. You do that because obeying people who have power over you is a way to avoid having them harm you, right? Because giving an ass-kissing is better than getting an ass-kicking?
Except the hu-mons you live among have power over you, not just the ones with badges and titles and guns. If you’re so scared of people harming you, why aren’t you sucking up to everyone? Why not try to pretend to act like a normal human being, instead of your natural state which is an annoying asshole? Ever watch Seinfeld? Remember the episode where George realized that his every instinct was wrong, and if he always did the opposite of his first inclination he’d be better off? That should be you.
Smapti is broken and cannot be fixed. His youth was so chaotic and negative that he never developed a sense of security and perspective, and he craved for security. Now, in his early thirties, he has learned that the best way for him to cope is to reduce a complex world into black and white, and to find security by identifying with authority. Facts and reason are not relevant to him, for they cause questioning rather than provide security. He does the best he can with what he has, but that has led him to hold some horrifying opinions. Sadly, Smapti remains not fully human.
You know what? That’s worse than anything he’s ever said.
You beat me to it.
There are some seriously judgmental assholes posting in this thread.
In my books, condemning a person for not suffering long enough while dying is inhuman. Judgemental, you betcha.
You obviously haven’t read very far.