# This is the meta-solution to ethics **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 1, 2014, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-the-meta-solution-to-ethics/682566 "2014-03-01T01:22:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Ecmandu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/958977/32.png) [@Ecmandu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ecmandu)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2014, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-the-meta-solution-to-ethics/682566/81 "2014-03-02T03:43:24Z")
> [@marshmallow](#): > > Welcome to the Dope, Dr. Xavier. > > If that’s true, wouldn’t it mean that – humor me – what you’re describing is not actually sexual merit? Whatever women are attracted to is sexual merit. Kinda a truism. > > Things I’ve learned from this glorious thread: > > 1. Ethics is something that can be solved. > > 2. All ethics is suicide. All of it. Even thought experiments and moral dilemmas that have nothing to do with suicide. > > 3. Men kill themselves because women won’t have sex with them. Women kill themselves because mumble mumble. > > 4. Women are worse than Nazis and communist Russia. > > 5. Women caused Nazism. > > 6. Human sexuality is not semi-monogamous. We’re more like elephant seals where alpha males control large harems and beta males go pound sand. > > 7. It’s women’s fault men rape, kill, and harass them. > > 8. Men never have fantasies where they’re raped, belittled, or controlled by women. > > 9. Men who try to better the world die alone and childless. All of them. > > 10. Women don’t approach men or initiate sex unless he’s a bad boy. > > So you banged out ethics, real number theory, and evolutionary gender relations all in two pages. Can I suggest a new topic? How about race relations? That’s always entertaining. Women largely kill themselves because they screw up a suicide attempt to get a male into their lives… some suicides are because of male abuse… but the male abuse comes from female sexuality, so actually the female suicides are caused by female sexuality more than male sexuality. Ethics is not all ABOUT suicide, it’s about getting suicide to zero when suicide is as easy as possible. Men kill themselves because women give bullies the most sex, sometimes they are the bullies who cannot live with themselves after a while. The two suicide spikes are 15-24 (the male sexual peak, when the jerks are getting sex dumped on them like crazy - a sexual peak granted that you cannot give back to a person) and beyond the age of 70 when it’s unlikely there will be sex again… granted most of these suicides are men. You can prove in studies that I have outlined, that sexual choice effects violence, but violence does not effect sexual choice, so yes, millions of years of women giving the most sexual choice to ORNATE aggression caused Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia amongst other things… and actually the SUICIDE rates in these HELLS was miniscule compared to the suicide rates from female sexuality… it causes MORE suffering per capita to give bullies the most sex, BY FAR, than to put someone through a concentration camp. They are not alpha males, this is nonsense that guys who get laid use to try to explain their superiority (which they assume because they get the most sex), you don’t look at the people who get the most sexual choice to determine who is most fit or what behavior is least fit, you look at the SUICIDE rates and what causes them. Well… as far as the statement that it’s women fault that men rape kill and harass them, guys who spend their whole lives trying to prevent these things are sexually punished by women so severely that they commit suicide, so it certainly doesn’t help the situation. Women are vicious to men who try to prevent rape war and suicide, the sexual neglect is so severe relative to people that deserve it less that it is perhaps the biggest insult a person can perpetrate upon another person in a sexual species. To pick the nicest people to receive the biggest insult… I can tell you, men would NEVER do that to women. Also, you must understand, we are talking MILLIONS of years here. Men don’t have erotic ones, I suppose there are some bondage guys, but this is about masochism not the POWER you feel when someone is so lustful of you they can’t help but to abuse you. Men do not have those fantasies. No. True. They sometimes come up to nice men, but nice men aren’t sexually jealous people and women will spot the minute signs that they aren’t and will want them as a friend instead of having sex with them. If it’s a request for sex itself… no, women NEVER approach nice men for a request for sex. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2014, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-the-meta-solution-to-ethics/682566/82 "2014-03-02T04:03:43Z")
> [@Ecmandu](#): > > I tried to explain this before… > > When I explained suicidal tension, I explained a scenario where 1000 people were put in rooms with a butter knife and 1000 in rooms with a serrated knife, and then they were tortured, now what this study will always show is that there will be way more suicides in the room with the serrated knife because of a concept called suicidal tension. Now… we know it’s a fact even if we don’t conduct the studies!! And this study would be EXTREMELY unethical. You arguing with me about the effect of sexual choice on aggression and depression and suicide is like you saying to me for the concept of suicidal tension “show me the study” It’s OBVIOUS that there is such a thing as a suicidal tension… nobody needs to actually do the study. I’m not asking for a study of torture and suicide, so this is irrelevant. > [@Ecmandu](#): > > This is exactly the same, > > When you tag the most aggressive members of a species with one color dye and the less aggressive members of a species with another color dye and control which group is allowed to have sex… the other members of the species will either act more aggressively or less aggressively in order to be able to have sex. It’s the biggest “Duh” experiment there is. The point, is that sexual choice determines behavior… the LAW is: > > Whatever receives the most sexual choice with intensify in affect and behavior for the larger group. It’s actually a bit more subtle than this, because the stress levels for the entire species or targeted gender will RAISE when the more aggressive members get the sex and will DECRTEASE when the less aggressive members get most the sex, which is why women in OUR species commit much less suicide than men do… because men, give non-ornate aggression the MOST sexual choice in women, which makes sense from a species survival standpoint, so the women don’t get nearly the level of existential depression that falls on the men. > > You can use sexual choice studies to induce depression in any species by giving the most aggressive members the most sexual choice and you can decrease depression in species by giving the least aggressive members the sexual choice. You can do this with any species. So, if I understand you correctly, you’ve never actually read a study of these phenomena, you just believe them to be true? And, again, there’s no third-party experimenter selecting for aggressiveness among humans. ---
**Author:** ![Ecmandu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/958977/32.png) [@Ecmandu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ecmandu)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2014, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-the-meta-solution-to-ethics/682566/83 "2014-03-02T04:12:25Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > I’m not asking for a study of torture and suicide, so this is irrelevant. > > So, if I understand you correctly, you’ve never actually read a study of these phenomena, you just believe them to be true? > > And, again, there’s no third-party experimenter selecting for aggressiveness among humans. There has never been a study done to falsify this, even though if such a study were done, it would be falsified exactly as I say. Just like the study to prove the concept of suicidal tension would falsify exactly as I say it will. Anyone who can grasp enough about life systems will know the outcome of both of these studies before they are even done, and that has absolutely nothing to do with confirmation bias, it is just that the studies are so “Duh” that it’s obvious what the outcome would be for anyone not trying to hide in a cesspool of denial about how species work. ---
**Author:** ![zoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zoid/32/336_2.png) [@zoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zoid)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2014, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-the-meta-solution-to-ethics/682566/84 "2014-03-02T04:18:56Z")
> [@Ecmandu](#): > > There has never been a study done to falsify this, even though if such a study were done, it would be falsified exactly as I say. Just like the study to prove the concept of suicidal tension would falsify exactly as I say it will. Anyone who can grasp enough about life systems will know the outcome of both of these studies before they are even done, and that has absolutely nothing to do with confirmation bias, it is just that the studies are so “Duh” that it’s obvious what the outcome would be for anyone not trying to hide in a cesspool of denial about how species work. That is not remotely how good study works and makes your assertions invalid. I guess this is another “thought experiment”. Yeesh! ---
**Author:** ![Ecmandu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/958977/32.png) [@Ecmandu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ecmandu)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2014, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-the-meta-solution-to-ethics/682566/85 "2014-03-02T04:27:52Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Rather, because Cantor’s proof is correct, you cannot list all the real numbers. He proved this by showing how, in an exhaustive listing, a new number can be constructed which was not on the list. > > Moving the numbers around doesn’t change this. The proof still works, in five dimensions or in seven, just as it works in base 8 or base 889. > > You would have to show an actual flaw in Cantor’s proof. Your construction doesn’t do this. > > (Actually, you haven’t formally described a construction. You’ve spoken gibberish, but you haven’t actually said what your system consists of. You described a “mirror notation” that pairs numbers up – except that it isn’t a one-to-one pairing, and so it fails to serve any purpose as far as listing all numbers. It is also relatively easy to use a variant of Cantor’s proof to show that there is a number that is not contained in your listing.) _sigh_ really… 0.12345678910 1.23456789101 2.34567891011 3.45678910111 4.56789101112 etc… the diagonal never ends up on the list. so you make another list! 0.13579… 0.2468… 1.3579… and keep expanding the diagonals… It’s TRIVIAL to add the diagonals using multiple lists, and the diagonalization argument is Cantors disproof! Thus: Because these can be COUNTED, Cantors disproof is not a REAL disproof. That doesn’t mean that I’ve proven or disproven that the reals can or cannot be counted, just that Cantors disproof is not really a disproof for what he CLAIMED it to be… that the reals cannot all be counted. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2014, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-the-meta-solution-to-ethics/682566/86 "2014-03-02T04:29:40Z")
> [@Ecmandu](#): > > There has never been a study done to falsify this… Have you actually looked? > [@Ecmandu](#): > > …even though if such a study were done, it would be falsified exactly as I say. Just like the study to prove the concept of suicidal tension would falsify exactly as I say it will. That’s not how science works. > [@Ecmandu](#): > > Anyone who can grasp enough about life systems will know the outcome of both of these studies before they are even done, and that has absolutely nothing to do with confirmation bias, it is just that the studies are so “Duh” that it’s obvious what the outcome would be for anyone not trying to hide in a cesspool of denial about how species work. A few things: 1. Your conclusion assumes that non-aggressive males are able to become aggressive ones through deliberate choice. Could it not be the case that aggressiveness is fixed and innate? In which event, the non-aggressive males wouldn’t breed at all, and the experiment would merely be denying the non-aggressive ones the chance to breed, and noting that, presumably, the ensuing generations were more innately aggressive than the baseline generation. 2. Your conclusion also assumes with no particular basis that all species are sufficiently similar to humanity as to suffer depression due to lack of a sexual partner, analogous to the clinical depression that sometimes leads to suicide. 3. Even if your assumptions were true, your proposed study is not applicable to human relationships. For the third time, no third party is denying non-aggressive males the chance to reproduce, and thus limiting females to aggressive male partners. Non-aggressive males reproduce all the time. Your statements here are akin to saying that if only left-handed males are allowed to breed, a species will become mostly left-handed, therefore humans are mostly left-handed. ---
**Author:** ![turtlescanfly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/65b543/32.png) [@turtlescanfly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/turtlescanfly)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2014, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-the-meta-solution-to-ethics/682566/87 "2014-03-02T04:34:01Z")
> [@Ecmandu](#): > > Women largely kill themselves because they screw up a suicide attempt to get a male into their lives… some suicides are because of male abuse… but the male abuse comes from female sexuality, so actually the female suicides are caused by female sexuality more than male sexuality.\ > > Men kill themselves because women give bullies the most sex. Again you make this ridiculous claim, and still no cite. You have described thought experiments with “obvious” outcomes that support your position, but that is neither a proof or a cite. Can you control sexual aggression by artificially selecting for it? Sure, I’ll buy that, even without conducting an actual experiment. But how does that fact (and I’m being generous in referring to it as such) translate to "most suicides are a result of sex? You claim to have great insight into a great many things. You started out innocent enough, with an eccentric yet harmless idea that, while misguided, appeared to be simply a case of perhaps having difficulty explaining exactly what you mean. But every post you make it becomes more and more obvious that you are mentally unbalanced, unhealthily fixated on sex and death, and misogynistic in the extreme. I don’t say this to be insulting, so I hope you don’t take it that way. I have developed a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach as if I’m witnessing the emergence of a sociopath. Don’t bother with the cite at this point. I’m bowing out of this thread for my own mental health. I fear that provoking you any further will have nasty, real-life consequences for someone, and I don’t want that on my conscious. ---
**Author:** ![Ecmandu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/958977/32.png) [@Ecmandu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ecmandu)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2014, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-the-meta-solution-to-ethics/682566/88 "2014-03-02T04:37:21Z")
> [@zoid](#): > > That is not remotely how good study works and makes your assertions invalid. > > I guess this is another “thought experiment”. > Yeesh! You know… people don’t seem to think that studying non-human animals is unethical, so perhaps because of my work here, someone may actually do these studies… and I guarantee you, when they do them, they will find the exact results that I said they’d find here. Like I said earlier, some studies you can falsify before even doing them, I would NEVER place people in rooms with varying levels of suicidal tension and start torturing them to prove a concept EVERYONE knows is true. Now the concept of sexual choice seems to have larger stakes, so people have larger denial about it, but the experiment is actually as easy to predict as the suicidal tension experiment for anyone, again, not mired in a cesspool of denial about how species actually work. ---
**Author:** ![Ecmandu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/958977/32.png) [@Ecmandu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ecmandu)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2014, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-the-meta-solution-to-ethics/682566/89 "2014-03-02T04:43:01Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > Have you actually looked? > > That’s not how science works. > > A few things: > > 1. Your conclusion assumes that non-aggressive males are able to become aggressive ones through deliberate choice. Could it not be the case that aggressiveness is fixed and innate? In which event, the non-aggressive males wouldn’t breed at all, and the experiment would merely be denying the non-aggressive ones the chance to breed, and noting that, presumably, the ensuing generations were more innately aggressive than the baseline generation. > > 2. Your conclusion also assumes with no particular basis that all species are sufficiently similar to humanity as to suffer depression due to lack of a sexual partner, analogous to the clinical depression that sometimes leads to suicide. > > 3. Even if your assumptions were true, your proposed study is not applicable to human relationships. For the third time, no third party is denying non-aggressive males the chance to reproduce, and thus limiting females to aggressive male partners. Non-aggressive males reproduce all the time. Your statements here are akin to saying that if only left-handed males are allowed to breed, a species will become mostly left-handed, therefore humans are mostly left-handed. Yes, I have looked. Yes, they will either become more aggressive or more depressed and this is determined by their genetics… they will not be less depressed and non-aggressive. Yes, it does. This is most pronounced when species interact in LARGE groups with each other where sexual choice is occurring. Women do not mate with non-aggressive males in the human species. The invisible hand in this species is the absolute nature of the female sexual consent structure. Apparently you’ve never heard of the Irish Elk. The Irish Elk was a species where the women gave so much sexual choice to large antlers, that when the males reached maturity they could no longer lift their heads off the ground, and the species went extinct (ornate aggression being selected in run-away sexual selection). The same thing is happening in our species. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2014, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-the-meta-solution-to-ethics/682566/90 "2014-03-02T04:55:42Z")
> [@Ecmandu](#): > > Yes, I have looked. Well, keep at it. [QUOTE=Ecmandu] Yes, they will either become more aggressive or more depressed and this is determined by their genetics… they will not be less depressed and non-aggressive. Yes, it does. This is most pronounced when species interact in LARGE groups with each other where sexual choice is occurring. [/quote] Any evidence for this supposed depression? [QUOTE=Ecmandu] Women do not mate with non-aggressive males in the human species. The invisible hand in this species is the absolute nature of the female sexual consent structure. [/quote] I’d really prefer to tack back toward the suicide & ethics portion, but are you defining non-aggressive males as those unwilling to express any romantic interest in a woman under any circumstances? If so, what percentage of the male population would you estimate to be non-aggressive? [QUOTE=Ecmandu] Apparently you’ve never heard of the Irish Elk. The Irish Elk was a species where the women gave so much sexual choice to large antlers, that when the males reached maturity they could no longer lift their heads off the ground, and the species went extinct (ornate aggression being selected in run-away sexual selection). [/quote] Cite? [This BBC report on a study in _Nature_](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/10/1006_041006_giant_deer.html) concluded otherwise: > [@](#): > > The research team says this suggests additional factors, besides climate change, probably hastened the giant deer’s eventual extinction. The factors could include hunting or habitat destruction by humans. > > … > > Some scientists have suggested this exaggerated feature—the result of females preferring stags with the largest antlers, possibly because they advertised a male’s fitness—contributed to the mammal’s downfall. They say such antlers would have been a serious inconvenience in the dense forests that spread northward after the last ice age. > > But, Lister said, “That’s a hard argument to make, because the deer previously survived perfectly well through wooded interglacials [warmer periods between ice ages].” [QUOTE=Ecmandu] The same thing is happening in our species. [/QUOTE] Well, murder and war deaths are at their lowest rates in human history, so we sure don’t appear to be selected for aggressiveness. Anyway, back to suicide: any evidence that links the majority of suicides to the inability to find a romantic partner? ---
**Author:** ![Ecmandu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/958977/32.png) [@Ecmandu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ecmandu)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2014, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-the-meta-solution-to-ethics/682566/91 "2014-03-02T05:08:09Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > Well, keep at it. > > Any evidence for this supposed depression? > > I’d really prefer to tack back toward the suicide & ethics portion, but are you defining non-aggressive males as those unwilling to express any romantic interest in a woman under any circumstances? If so, what percentage of the male population would you estimate to be non-aggressive? > > Cite? [This BBC report on a study in _Nature_](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/10/1006_041006_giant_deer.html) concluded otherwise: > > Well, murder and war deaths are at their lowest rates in human history, so we sure don’t appear to be selected for aggressiveness. > > Anyway, back to suicide: any evidence that links the majority of suicides to the inability to find a romantic partner? We actually know that percentage!!! it’s 3.5% No… Steven Pinker figured out that the rates of violence are decreasing… however, the rates of suicide (mostly men) have been INCREASING steadily for the past 60 years… the problem is not so much about getting violence to zero… I mean if we really set our minds to it, we could develop technology to read peoples intents automatically and check the consent of the other party, and if the intent is violence or rape we could teleport them to pre-made prison cells. It’s actually not that impossible to get violence and rape to 0%. The BIG problem is suicide. Once you get the instances of violence and rape to 0%, the female suicide rates will also be 0%… BUT the male rates will continue to be climbing to 1 million per year, and if we made suicide easy, the female rates would still be zero and the male rates would be about 20 million per year. The problem with species that are sentient, is that high suicide rates means unsustainability… which in short terms, means that our species will crash. Probably not from war, but from environmental degradation, which is another form of conspicuous consumption aggression. ---
**Author:** ![Ecmandu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/958977/32.png) [@Ecmandu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ecmandu)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2014, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-the-meta-solution-to-ethics/682566/92 "2014-03-02T05:16:12Z")
I wanted to again add that the reason sexual selection is linked to suicide was the mental illness tack that was taken earlier… female sexual choice will have severe neurological effects upon non-aggressive males, psychosis and other depressive symptoms, males are much more likely than women to have psychotic breaks because of this situation. Literally, they are sane people in a completely insane world, and they snap psychically from the high suicidal tension combined with the sexual neglect of kindness on the male side, which has profound effects on their physiology/ neurology and psychological experience here. ---
**Author:** ![Ambivalid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ambivalid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambivalid)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2014, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-the-meta-solution-to-ethics/682566/93 "2014-03-02T05:16:43Z")
Oh my. I am sorry for what/who ever has inflicted _ **this** _ kind of damage to a person’s psyche. Have you ever considered a prostitute? ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2014, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-the-meta-solution-to-ethics/682566/94 "2014-03-02T05:24:10Z")
> [@Ecmandu](#): > > We actually know that percentage!!! it’s 3.5% Cite? It’d be helpful to know exactly what that measurement was using as its definition. [QUOTE=Ecmandu] No… Steven Pinker figured out that the rates of violence are decreasing… [/quote] Which goes against the theory that aggression is a reproductive advantage. > [@Ecmandu](#): > > …however, the rates of suicide (mostly men) have been INCREASING steadily for the past 60 years… Cite? [This](http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0779940.html) has the U.S. rate, 1950-present, being a slow decline. What data can you provide? > [@Ecmandu](#): > > the problem is not so much about getting violence to zero… I mean if we really set our minds to it, we could develop technology to read peoples intents automatically and check the consent of the other party, and if the intent is violence or rape we could teleport them to pre-made prison cells. It’s actually not that impossible to get violence and rape to 0%. The BIG problem is suicide. Once you get the instances of violence and rape to 0%, the female suicide rates will also be 0%… …In spite of the evidence that 90% of people who commit suicide are mentally ill? Again, you seemly shockingly under informed about suicide, for someone who made it the cornerstone of their ethical theory. The idea that women only commit suicide over violence or rape is absurd. > [@Ecmandu](#): > > BUT the male rates will continue to be climbing to 1 million per year, and if we made suicide easy, the female rates would still be zero and the male rates would be about 20 million per year. The problem with species that are sentient, is that high suicide rates means unsustainability… which in short terms, means that our species will crash. Probably not from war, but from environmental degradation, which is another form of conspicuous consumption aggression. 1 million / 20 million worldwide? Or in the U.S.? Again: any evidence that links the majority of suicides to the inability to find a romantic partner? ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2014, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-the-meta-solution-to-ethics/682566/95 "2014-03-02T05:24:34Z")
> [@Ecmandu](#): > > _sigh_ really… > 0.12345678910 > 1.23456789101 > 2.34567891011 > 3.45678910111 > 4.56789101112 > > etc… the diagonal never ends up on the list. > > so you make another list! > > 0.13579… > 0.2468… > 1.3579… > > and keep expanding the diagonals… It’s TRIVIAL to add the diagonals using multiple lists, and the diagonalization argument is Cantors disproof! > > Thus: Because these can be COUNTED, Cantors disproof is not a REAL disproof. > > That doesn’t mean that I’ve proven or disproven that the reals can or cannot be counted, just that Cantors disproof is not really a disproof for what he CLAIMED it to be… that the reals cannot all be counted. That isn’t how Cantor’s proof works. He adds a step which you left out: he alters the numbers, changing the digit along the diagonal. If the digit is a 3 you change it to a 2. Otherwise, you change the digit to a 3. Now, the number along the diagonal is a new number which does not appear anywhere in the list. The list is incomplete. Thus, the numbers on the list can’t be counted, thus Cantor is right, and thus you’re wrong. (It doesn’t help matters much that your argument is also incoherent. “So you just make another list.” Okay. There are two possibilities: the numbers on your list are already on the first list – in which case they have already been taken into account in the proof – or the numbers on your list aren’t on the original list, which contradicts the premise, but, shrug. Okay: we’ll append your new list to the original list, eliminate any duplicates, alter the digits as above, and refresh the proof. The proof works, and you’re wrong again.) ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2014, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-the-meta-solution-to-ethics/682566/96 "2014-03-02T05:27:07Z")
> [@Ecmandu](#): > > I wanted to again add that the reason sexual selection is linked to suicide was the mental illness tack that was taken earlier… female sexual choice will have severe neurological effects upon non-aggressive males, psychosis and other depressive symptoms, males are much more likely than women to have psychotic breaks because of this situation. Literally, they are sane people in a completely insane world, and they snap psychically from the high suicidal tension combined with the sexual neglect of kindness on the male side, which has profound effects on their physiology/ neurology and psychological experience here. This would be considerably more persuasive if you had any evidence for any of it. As it stands, a theory that aliens hiding on the moon use Moon-Rays to compel men to kill themselves is just as well supported as yours. ---
**Author:** ![PBear42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@PBear42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PBear42)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2014, 6:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-the-meta-solution-to-ethics/682566/97 "2014-03-02T06:23:10Z")
> [@Ecmandu](#): > > Well… all of ethics boils down to suicide rates. The Golden Rule is a much better candidate. And more “meta.” Also, I agree with other posters. A thought experiment isn’t a study. It doesn’t even resemble one. Aristotle did lots of thought experiments. They weren’t science. ---
**Author:** ![Ecmandu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/958977/32.png) [@Ecmandu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ecmandu)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2014, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-the-meta-solution-to-ethics/682566/98 "2014-03-02T06:43:11Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > That isn’t how Cantor’s proof works. He adds a step which you left out: he alters the numbers, changing the digit along the diagonal. If the digit is a 3 you change it to a 2. Otherwise, you change the digit to a 3. Now, the number along the diagonal is a new number which does not appear anywhere in the list. The list is incomplete. > > Thus, the numbers on the list can’t be counted, thus Cantor is right, and thus you’re wrong. > > (It doesn’t help matters much that your argument is also incoherent. “So you just make another list.” Okay. There are two possibilities: the numbers on your list are already on the first list – in which case they have already been taken into account in the proof – or the numbers on your list aren’t on the original list, which contradicts the premise, but, shrug. Okay: we’ll append your new list to the original list, eliminate any duplicates, alter the digits as above, and refresh the proof. The proof works, and you’re wrong again.) This isn’t how I learned Cantors diagonal proof. The problem is that Cantor suggests that all the reals cannot be counted. so a list like… etc… 0.01234567891 0.12345678910 0.23456789101 0.34567891011 0.45678910111 0.56789101112 0.67891011121 0.78910111213 etc… has diagonals that cannot be on the list because all diagonals and their derivatives have a interval greater than 1 which the list accommodates. There’s no way to list all of the irrationals in one list of numbers in one to one correspondence in one dimension: 0123456789 1234567891 2345678910 3456789101 4567891011 5678910111 6789101112 7891011121 8910111213 The diagonals have intervals of 2 and if you make a list of all the numbers with intervals of two the diagonals have intervals of 3 etc… not that you need the diagonals to see that this sequence never produces intervals greater than 1, so you don’t need a diagonal “proof” to make the argument, personally I find it confusing. You can’t list the numbers 0123456789 … … … and 0246810121 2468101214 4681012141 6810121416 in the same list if the intervals go to infinity. you could list: 0123456789 0246810121 1234567891 2468101214 2345678910 4681012141 but that’s because you’re only counting 2 intervals, an interval of 1 and an interval of 2. You can do it if you only count any finite number of intervals, but the moment it becomes infinite, you can never pass the zero to count the irrationals inwards and you can’t count the irrationals inwards unless you stop this sequence: 0123456789 0246810121 0369121518 0481216202 0510152025 0612182430 etc… This isn’t a diagonal argument though, but it is proof that at infinity, you cannot count all the irrationals in one list, using only one dimension. Now I’m looking at a list that sequences them with infinite lists, in correspondence with the counting numbers. using multiple decimal points for dimensions. The point of this is that you cannot count all of the reals using one list with one dimension, because one list with one dimension has a LIMIT, and even though the list is infinite, you can prove that there is a limit to how much infinity you can squeeze into one list with one dimension. Your modification of the number 3 etc… doesn’t change that these modifications can be added when dealing with MULTIPLE lists, so actually your amazing revelation that Cantor used the diagonal argument with some stupid algorithm to somehow stump that these numbers can’t be listed is ABSURD. I can easily create NEW lists to accommodate this algorithm, so actually Cantors argument doesn’t really prove that all the reals cannot be counted… what can be proven is that all the reals cannot be counted in ONE LIST WITH ONE DIMENSION… Cantors algorithm not withstanding. ---
**Author:** ![Ecmandu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/958977/32.png) [@Ecmandu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ecmandu)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2014, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-the-meta-solution-to-ethics/682566/99 "2014-03-02T06:46:16Z")
> [@PBear42](#): > > The Golden Rule is a much better candidate. And more “meta.” > > Also, I agree with other posters. A thought experiment isn’t a study. It doesn’t even resemble one. Aristotle did lots of thought experiments. They weren’t science. Golden rule is not tit for tat or an eye for an eye… it actually fails because of psychopathy… the golden rule holds that you would want to be forgiven for all of your trespasses so you should forgive everyone all their trespasses… this has the amazing problem of creating hell forever, for non-psychopaths and heaven forever, for psychopaths. ---
**Author:** ![PBear42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@PBear42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PBear42)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2014, 7:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-the-meta-solution-to-ethics/682566/100 "2014-03-02T07:43:03Z")
> [@Ecmandu](#): > > Golden rule is not tit for tat or an eye for an eye… it actually fails because of psychopathy… the golden rule holds that you would want to be forgiven for all of your trespasses so you should forgive everyone all their trespasses… this has the amazing problem of creating hell forever, for non-psychopaths and heaven forever, for psychopaths. That’s not even close to what the [Golden Rule](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule) is generally understood to mean. Recall context. You asserted “all of ethics boils down to suicide rates.” I suggested the Golden Rule is a much better candidate. If you care to understand why, I recommend you read John Rawls’, [A Theory of Justice](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Theory_of_Justice). BTW, reading the Wiki article is no substitute for reading the book. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-the-meta-solution-to-ethics/682566.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-the-meta-solution-to-ethics/682566.md?page=6)