Seeing as the ‘poor’ make up the mass of workers/labourers in modern society, and seeing that it is their labour that is sold at a cost that allowers the ‘factory owners’ to create a profit, I believe that the poor are extremely valuable to the wealthy.
[QUOTE=Ensign Edison]
I believe that if Martin Hyde is not a troll, he’s a sadistic sociopath who should be kept away from normal humans.
[/QUOTE]
I see no reason you can’t believe both.
Whoa.
I believe Martin Hyde is about a million times more assholish than Der Trihs.
[QUOTE=matt_mcl]
I agree with three of Martin’s beliefs as stated, but I doubt he’d appreciate which ones and where I take them.
[/QUOTE]
You may be surprised. Many of the controversial beliefs I listed were very non-explanatory, and intentionally so. I only intended to state the belief, not how I feel that belief should fit in with society as a whole, at least for most of them, some of them I was more direct.
In any case, I am not thin skinned and doubt I’d be bothered by any direction you might take anything I said.
[QUOTE=kambuckta]
Seeing as the ‘poor’ make up the mass of workers/labourers in modern society, and seeing that it is their labour that is sold at a cost that allowers the ‘factory owners’ to create a profit, I believe that the poor are extremely valuable to the wealthy.
[/QUOTE]
Actually most factory workers are of average wealth in the United States and most first world countries. In third world countries the factory workers are typically poor but are often still better compensated and have a higher standard of living than many of the agricultural workers in the third world.
Saying that I believe the wealthy are inherently more valuable is not akin to saying the poor are without valuable, or are not in fact highly vauable.
I just believe on an individual person vs. person basis the wealthy are more valuable.
[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
Saying that I believe the wealthy are inherently more valuable is not akin to saying the poor are without valuable, or are not in fact highly vauable.
[/QUOTE]
That should read “value.” Also the last quoted word should be “valuable.”
Bad typing today. 
I believe Americans have a low self-esteem and are actually very intelligent, kind and humorous [and some are very good-looking]
I believe the Iraq war was an honest mistake [at the beginning]
I believe the European Union is a fucked up invention, just made for the personal benefits of some lunatic leaders.
I believe that every family [with either one, or eight grown-up kids in the house] is entitled to only ONE car.
I believe Tom Cruise is ugly. So is Angelina Jolie.
I believe [as an atheïst] that everyone should the hell believe in any deity he wants.
I believe I’m allowed to call Jesus, Buddah or Mohammed an old fart.
I believe that black liquorice is excellent.
I believe the Jewishs are again the Jewish of the nineteenthirties/fourties
I believe that peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches are evil.
I believe that all these controversial beliefs stated here, in this thread, are a bit outdated. 
I believe I made a lot of spelling mistakes in the above post.
I believe it’s late and I believe that for once - even though this is the pit - I shall wish you a bloody fucking good evening.
[QUOTE=silenus]
I agree with about a dozen of Martin’s beliefs., to one degree or another.
[/QUOTE]
13 1/2 for me; some on “as I define those terms” basis.
[QUOTE=Ensign Edison]
I believe that if Martin Hyde is not a troll, he’s a sadistic sociopath who should be kept away from normal humans.
Yet I still don’t think Red Shirt is so terrible. I don’t think he’s happy about the pain he thinks consciousness is responsible for. Ultimately, his position is one with the reduction of suffering as its goal. I don’t agree with his conclusions, but I have sympathy for his lonely mission. Hyde, on the other hand, delights in his evil.
[/QUOTE]
He wants to kill you, me, everybody. He wants to kill dogs, elephants, whales, and baby sea otters. He’s a fucking menace. He belongs in a mental institution. Luckily, the likelyhood is that he’s posting from his Mom’s basement, so he’s pretty much halfway there. He projects his own misery and self-centeredness on everyone else…since he’s a miserable bastard, the rest of us must be too.
Martin Hyde is just another conservative blowhard. Der Trihs is just the kind of detached “consistent” self-hating nihilistic sociopath who will one day go into a school with 27 guns and start killing people. Not out of hatred, oh no! He’s a fucking angel of fucking mercy! Those poor deluded fools want to live, but he knows better, he’s doing them a favor by putting a bullet in their brains.
[QUOTE=myskepticsight]
I believe that homosexuals should have all the same rights as straight people. And I believe homosexuality is not a choice and not a mental illness (it’s not in the DSM anymore for a reason). Anyone that thinks that being homosexual is a defect or wrong is an asshole and needs a gay friend or family member in their life to open their mind. I did not choose one day to be straight, and my friends have told me at least in their experience that they always knew they were gay.
[/quote]
I agree that homosexuals should have the same rights as heterosexuals and I also do not believe homosexuality is a choice. However I believe that it’s no longer in the DSM because of political concerns as opposed to medical ones.
However my statement that homosexuality is a mental illness is probably somewhat too simplified. I’m also open to the possibility that it is better classified as a developmental disorder.
Also I recognize it is probably difficult to reconcile my claims that homosexuals should have full rights of citizenship yet I also state that the mentally ill and indigent should not have the right to vote. So I think a better wording would be that the “mentally incompetent and indigent” should not have the right to vote. Mentally incompetent shouldn’t be seen as a measure of intellect (such as IQ per se) but a status description for people who generally are not mentally competent to function as independent, adult humans in society.
I agree. I also believe the current tax system in the United States has the rich paying their fair share. I think the percentage of total tax revenue that only one percent of taxpayers (the top one percent) cover is eye-opening for most people who do not think the rich pay their fair share.
[QUOTE=Beware of Doug]
IOW, you’re either a Calvinist or a status qujo apologist. What you’re saying is, in effect, “If you’re a white-collar criminal prick with a shitload of money and three palatial homes, you automatically deserve it, no questions. And if you’re a single mom with 5 kids who has to work the graveyard shift at Squall-Mart and live by a crackhouse, you deserve that, too.”
[/QUOTE]
No skippy, I think you get what you work for. If you’re a single mom with 5 kids, there may have come a time in your life when the cessation of sex might have been a good idea. You’re in charge of what you get or don’t get by a large margin. Granted, there are outside influences (racism, sexism, the ‘old boy’ network etc) but if you don’t work for it, you don’t deserve it.
[QUOTE=B.O.D]
And Fundamentalist Christianity will be right in there pitching.
[/QUOTE]
You know it. And they’ll be funded by your neighbors and mine that frequent the local McWorship warehouse.
[QUOTE=matt_mcl]
I agree with three of Martin’s beliefs as stated, but I doubt he’d appreciate which ones and where I take them.
[/QUOTE]
Ditto.
For the first, there’s still a long way to go before you hit a system of good government.
I’ve actually done one, if ‘fish’ counts as an animal in his eyes. I don’t believe it should be a necessity, though.
Though I behave mostly like an agnostic atheist, I am actually a closet theist. I believe that some significant portion of people who claim to be speaking to or gaining inspiration from a metaphysical entity, are. However, I am convinced that the diety or dieties interfacing with these people is an evil diety who lies about nearly everything, including itself, for selfish, capricious, nefarious, or otherwise evil reasons. (In case you can’t tell, I have dealt mostly with christians.)
I believe that men are deterministic. That is, even if you have a non-coporeal soul, that’s deterministic too.
I believe that anybody who is justly sentenced to life in prison (by which I mean we actually don’t plan to let them out) should be automatically given three appeals, as promptly as possible, and on failure of the third promptly euthanized.
I believe that dogs are stupid and cats are evil. There are probably exceptions, but no, your sweetums probably isn’t one of them.
I believe that all drugs should be legalized; however any action committed under the influence of any drug should be tried as a premeditated and/or deliberate action, based on if they planned to/knownigly took the drug. This should be applied to alcohol as well.
Tobacco smoking should be legal the same way shitting is legal; you can do it yourself or with willing accomplices, but the inflicting of tobacco smoke (or other toxic vapors) on an unwilling person should be a criminal act. This includes in the open air. Merely reeking of tobacco, but not actually smoking it, would not be criminal.
I believe that a woman should be freely allowed to get an abortion, up until a “reasonable point”, as long as she’s known for at least a month. (As for that reasonable point: I’m no expert; third trimester? There’s gotta be a point after which she’s had plenty of time to make her decision.) As a corollary to this, I believe that if a man impregnates a woman, and then 1) permanently signs away all rights to the child, and 2) gets sterilized, then he should be permanently free from paying or otherwise supporting that child. The child (if it’s carried to term) would be recorded as fatherless in this case.
Marriage as an institution should be eradicated from government purview; regulations dealing with families should be discarded or rewritten to address “shared property contracts” of any number of members of either gender. Religions remain free to marry -or not marry- whomever they wish, but the government only recognises the union via the property contract they may-or-may-not sign. Shared property contracts would include instructions on how to apportion assets and dependents on termination.
I don’t belive in esp or magic, though I would really like to. However, I do believe in luck, and that some people are naturally luckier than others (and some people are just fucked).
Babies are freakish and ugly. There are no cute babies, only besotted adults.
[QUOTE=gum]
I believe Americans have a low self-esteem and are actually very intelligent, kind and humorous [and some are very good-looking]
I believe the Jewishs are again the Jewish of the nineteenthirties/fourties
[/QUOTE]
Thanks for the former. Can you elaborate on the latter?
[QUOTE=Abe Babe]
I believe all foreigners living abroad should be taxed by the US government.
[/QUOTE]
I believe we should tax people standing in water.
Whoa!
I believe that peace and stability could be restored to Iraq by the middle of next week if the US put Saddam Hussein back in Baghdad, apologised for the mess they’d made, and slipped him a few quid to cover the damage.
I beleive we should tax anyone who farts.
[QUOTE=Lemur866]
He wants to kill you, me, everybody. He wants to kill dogs, elephants, whales, and baby sea otters. He’s a fucking menace. He belongs in a mental institution. Luckily, the likelyhood is that he’s posting from his Mom’s basement, so he’s pretty much halfway there. He projects his own misery and self-centeredness on everyone else…since he’s a miserable bastard, the rest of us must be too.
[/quote]
Wrong. He thinks that we’re all going to die, and that it’s better if we do, so we won’t suffer anymore. He doesn’t seem homicidal to me at all.
Martin Hyde once celebrated the death of an innocent teenager because someone the kid happened to be with tried to steal some pancakes. When a poster noted that they knew the kid, Martin continued to grind home the point that he believed the world was a better place with the kid dead.
Red Shirt talks a big game, but Martin is the true sociopath.
[QUOTE=AHunter3]
I believe that feminists (including the ones “everybody hates”, Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin) had some very valid points about sexual objectification; and that one can be totally pro-sexual freedom and anti-prudery & inhibition and still hold that position.
[/QUOTE]
On this note, I think human objectification is not an unmixed evil, for I believe that the male gender is underobjectified. Too often we are told that our bodies are essentially grotesque and that we need to cover ourselves up. And I don’t mean just flabby guys with man boobs, although that does figure largely into the attitude. If you doubt me, just look around your local beach next summer and compare men’s and women’s attire.