I'd say language is learned, using language to lie, ....what age is this taught at? I'm saying you don't need to teach it.

Associating a learned language equals learning to lie is not accurate.

Actually, I think it's a little obvious that it came about to make some statements to support other statements. Some of these statements are not backed by logic, or facts.

  Uhm what?

The only thing I suggested not valid was in pointing out the lack of support for said statements. (Which was true, since there wasn't support).

? If you're saying my belief influences how I act, I'd have to say that's true for all. However, it looks like we're saying the same words, but the words have different meanings.

The act of speaking requires a certain level of abstract thinking. Sounds are not really things, but you have to associate one with the other in order to functionally "speak." In effect your parents and environment have already started the process of lying by making this claim and indoctrinating you into the mass hallucination that is spoken language.

TheMonk- ???

Lying is, but deception is not. Deception has also been documented throughout the animal kingdom, and can be clearly documented via game theory to be a successful strategy when used appropriately. I have no question that humans, on the average, instinctively develop the ability to deceive others. Similarly, adultery has been documented in species, and has a positive correlation to physiological features in animals, which extend to humans as well. Adultery is another instinctual behavior, with clear competitive benefits. In fact, of the 7 deadly sins, I feel confident saying that we can find strong evidence linking all those behaviors to instinctual sources, that appear also in other species, where it is unlikely to be learned.

However, I would also argue that a person exhibiting all of these features still could not definitively be called 'good' or 'evil', and I certainly don't think you could apply any sort of metrics to determine what the average person is like. That's quantitative analysis of (dubiously) qualitative data.

I'm not sure that I would classify what happens between animals as adultry, since we have no way of knowing what forms of social contracts their relationships might take - for all we know the entire species might have a "don't ask don't tell don't talk about it" open relationship...

as to lying versus deception, that is why I said specifically lying. I already pointed out that there is deception innate to nature even in cases where there is no concept of intelligence involved (unless one invokes the concept of a creator, who then becomes the ultimate and orriginal deciever)- optical illusions, mimics, and so forth.

Speech/Language is deception.

Are you trying to deceive me right now? Or do you mean that it can be used for deception? Not sure why you say language is now deception.

I believe that what he is trying to convey is the concept that language is a form fo deception in that it conveys a meaning which is something other than what it instrinsicly is. There is nothing tpo the symbolys S H E E P to instrinsicly link it to a wooly mammal. This is further illustrated by the facts of Egyptian mystical/linguistic tradition in which a thing's name, and the symbol for the name were held to be not simply indicators or signifiers of a thing but the spiritual-magical equivelent to the thing itself.

What silver said.

I'm still not getting it.

Are you saying because the word doesn't match up with what you think it is describing, then it's a deception?

Example, you think a sheep is a woolly animal, so instead of calling it woolly animal, it's a deception to call it a sheep?

What I think has little to do with it. The culture defines the value of a word.

Let's look at a proper name: Bob. The name itself does not conjure Bob into existence, nor does Bob fall out of your mouth as you pronounce his name. This is because the name is not the thing! Bob is merely a series of sounds. Any other meaning is a sort of sleight of hand (tongue?).

An interesting theory, but it really doesn't become true because you were able to think it up.

Bob in your example doesn't have to be conjured to be true. Bob is real, and the name Bob really does mean that person. Just because language is an invention doesn't mean deception is now an invention.

You're stating they are, but you're not providing a reason for anyone to agree with that theory. It doesn't make sense using logic.

It's kind of like you're saying A is true, therefore, B is also true. But you're not showing why A=B.

But Bob isn't "Bob." He's a person that his parents, poor fools that they are, slapped a convenient label on. And I'm not the inventor of this theory... it's been in literary and cultural theory for over 60 years.

So, with generations of logic minded folk, such as Derrida, backing me up, I believe it is safe to say that the sign is not the signified.

Language is an invention for what purpose? To quote Hannibal Lector*, "what does he do, this man you seek?"

(An imaginary figure... one that does not exist, yet has a name.)

Sorry I hadn't a chance to throw my two cents in up until this point.  Been a bit busy.  Anyway, here's my attempt to reply to all the discussion so far in one post!

First, I think TitL's point that you don't need to teach children to lie is pretty uncontroversial.  I think some of the replies trying to say that lying isn't always bad sort of missed his point.  On the other hand, I'd agree with silveroak that the fact that children learn to lie on their own isn't necessarily the same as saying they're evil, or even "basically bad."  You don't need to teach children to tell the truth, either, they'll do that on their own too (and in fact they'll do it first, as they don't understand the concept of deception at a very early age), so if we use that criteria we're sort of at an impasse as to whether people are good or bad.

I'd suggest the main problem is trying to look for a black and white, either/or answer.  People naturally do some good things, and some bad things.  They're neither perfectly good, nor perfectly evil.  Whether they're "basically" good or evil depends on what we mean by the terms.  I think TitL's argument implies a "perfect or not perfect" dichotomy, where "not perfect" implies "basically evil," which seems too strong for me.  If "basically evil" just means "not perfect," I'd rather just use the term "not perfect," for clarity's sake.

I'd also propose that the "do you have to teach them to do it?" test isn't the best one for determining what people "basically" are.  A child has to learn to speak, but that doesn't mean people are "basically unable to speak," in my mind.  They have to learn to walk, but that doesn't mean walking isn't natural to humans.  We have to learn the rules of the societies we live in, and if we don't know those rules will break them, but that doesn't mean our natural state is one of a strong desire to break every rule at every chance we get.

Humans have urges that are both selfish and social.  These are often in conflict, and sometimes we lean more towards one side, and others we lean more towards the other side.  Summing either of those up as "evil" or "good" seems rather simplistic to me.

I'd say people tell the truth more than they lie, on average, and that they give to charity more often than they steal.  But does that make them more good than evil?  I don't know.  I think the terms aren't well enough defined to really answer the question by looking at what people do or don't do.  How many good deeds balance an act of evil?  How much money do you have to give to charity to offset walking by a homeless person asking for change?  How many acts of selflessness does a child rapist need to commit to get back into "basically good" status?  The very question of "are we more good than evil" implies a quantifiability of good and evil that I really don't think we have.  Unless we have a way of weighing up the good things we've done against the bad, the question doesn't even really have an answer, let alone an easy way of determining the answer.

Thank you, Tycho. I had gotten caught up in something boardering minutia, if it wasn't there.

Now I think it reasonable to say that doing good doesn't make you good. For example, if Hitler were to donate to charities, is he a good man? Obviously not. If Hitler gave CPR to 20 people, saving their lives, does that make JHitler a good person? If he fed 100 hungry people, saving their lives, does that make him a good person? If he fed tens of thousands of people, saving their lives, does that make him a good person?

If John Doe fed one person and saved their life, does that make them a good person?

Actions do not make you a good person. There are plenty of serial murderers that do good acts.

Now, if the Pope lied once, does that make him a liar? If the John Doe cheated on his spouse just once, does that make him an adulterer?

Intentions are important, yes? A person who feeds the hungry out of genuine desire to help is different than someone who does so only because a judge ordered them to community service, and does not help out any further. Or do you feel both are equally good because of the action. Intent doesn't matter?

And in reverse, actions don't make you a bad person. So by what metric do you define the term 'good person'?

Altruistic actions without expectation of reward.

I think another aspect of this that hasn't been discussed is the one of roles. A good parent may be willing to say strike their child on teh bottom to correct them while in general striking someone is considered a bad thing (though in some roles a good lover might do he same thing for entirely different reaons).
When we talk about Hitler for example- fairly universally defined as evil but he did not act alone. To my knowledge he didn't ever personally kill someone. He was 'evil' in his role as a leader- a role which has a tendancy to magnify consequences. Had he remained teh exact same person he was but failed at politics he would have still been racially prejudiced and power hungry, but I doubt he would be anything near the universal symbol of evil he is today.
So the question is not simply what virtues or flaws exist in our character, but what we choose to do with them and what roles we bring them to.

Really?  Hmm...what would you say does make someone good, in that case?


No...if somehow he had saved billions of lives, though, we'd probably look on him far more favorably than we do now.  We do this with many historical characters.  For example, we overlook that the founding fathers owned slaves, say, or that Martin Luther was very antisemitic.  To a degree, it's a question of whether we consider the bad bits to outweigh the good bits, or vice versa.  How we do that objectively, I honestly can't say, but it does seem like we do it subjectively without even thinking about it.  We think some people are more evil or more good than others, which implies some kind of quantification of good and evil acts.


Different answers in different situations, perhaps.  I tend to think of the term "liar" meaning more than just "has lied ones," though I can accept that that's what it means to some people.  I tend to think of it as someone who does lie; it's a statement indicating you shouldn't trust them because they have a tendency to lie that is implied to be on-going.  If it only means "has lied at least once" I don't think it'd be considered such an insult to call someone a liar.


Yes, definitely, though I have to admit I'm not entirely sure how.  Is a person who wants to punch you, but resists the urge better or worse than someone who didn't want to punch you in the first place?  I'm not really sure.  I can see it both ways to a degree, actually.


Doing good because you want to is certainly better (in my view) than someone who is forced to do it, but what of someone who doesn't really want to help, but knows it's the right thing to do so does it anyway?  In that case I'm not really sure if that's better or worse than wanting to do it.  It certainly is more selfless, and takes more strength/willpower.  But which is preferable?  I'm not sure, really.  What do you guys think?

Looking at it a different way, is a person good if they commit and evil act with good intention?  What if Hitler honestly and sincerely believe that he was doing the right thing?  Does that make him good?  I don't think so.  Abraham, we're told, was willing to kill his son because he thought God wanted him to do so.  Did his intent to kill his son (an act of evil) make him evil, or does intent to do as he was told make him good?  Should he have told God, "Screw you buddy, killing my son would be evil, and I'm not going to commit and evil act, even for you!" or is "just following orders" acceptable reasoning when dealing with deities?  (if so, does that apply when following other deities if you believe they're the right one?)  If Al Queda sincerely believe Allah wants them to blow people up, does that make them not evil?

I definitely agree that intent matters, but I don't think it's all that matters, and I'm not entirely sure how it fits in.  As a first stab at it, to be good you have to do good acts for good reasons.  To be fully evil you have to do evil acts for evil reasons.  Doing good acts for evil reasons and evil acts for good reasons are somewhere in between.

There is a saying that everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but
not their own facts.  These days, it seems more and more that what
people consider to be facts is diverging.  This is most easy to observe
in the political realm, but its also becoming common in less-directly
political ares, such as teach curriculum, the climate debate, etc.  It's
not just that people are expressing disagreements over values.  Those
kinds of disagreements over what is right or wrong, or what is more
important than what, have always been with us, and always will be.  And,
arguably, are a good thing, since they get us to consider other points
of view.  I'm also not just talking about disagreements over future
predictions, or estimated effects of one action or another.  Again,
predicting uncertain events in the future will always be difficult and
will always lead to disagreement.  What I'm talking about here is more
disagreement about what's actually true, right now (or in the past),
right in front of us.

I'm certainly not the first to point this out, and I'm sure I won't be
the last.  So I'm not going to get into too many examples, or try to
argue who's right in which case. I'm actually more interested in the
situation itself.  How does it come about, and can anything done about
it?  I've been noodling on it a bit today, and thought I'd run some
ideas by you guys to see what you thought.

First, most of the things we see this kind of disagreement on (though
not all) are complicated things.  The data is there for anyone to look
at, but there's so much data, related in non-trivial ways, that 99.9% of
us won't go to the trouble of looking at it.  We'll get a summary handed
to us second hand from a source we trust, and accept their analysis as
truth.  Sure, we could go look at the numbers ourselves, but why bother?
The source has already done it for us, and we know they wouldn't try to
mislead us.

This means which sources we trust will make a big difference in what we
consider to be true.  But how do we decide what sources we trust?
Usually based off what they tell us.  If they tell us thing that seem
true to us, we're likely to believe them.  If they tell us things that
don't match our beliefs, we're likely to distrust them.  This leads to a
positive feedback loop, where once we decide one source is trustworthy,
we start accepting what they say as true, dismissing those who disagree
with them, and trusting those who agree with them.  Beyond the initial
"choice" (I put this in quotes because I don't think it's actually a
conscious decision) of who to trust, it sort of progresses naturally on
its own, without our direction.

Add to this the echo chamber effect, where source X says something, Y
hears it and trusts X so repeats it as well, then Z hears X and Y saying
it, so thinks is couldn't possibly be wrong and so repeats it as well.
Then it gets back to X, who says "it's not just me saying it, these
other folks have looked into it and reached the same conclusion!" when
really it's all back to just X saying it in the first place.  This has
become more common in the "new media" world, where "trusted sources" are
just as likely to be random bloggers reading each others blogs as
independent news sources.

Another factor is tribalism, or us-and-them-ism.  There's not just
trusted sources telling you what you already believe, but also strongly
distrusted sources sayign the opposite.  But instead of making us less
confident, this actually reinforces our beliefs.  "If X said it it's
true, then I know it has to be false!"  A voice of disagreement in such
cases actually makes us more confident we're right.  This makes it
particularly difficult to escape the echo chamber, as voices from the
"outside" trying to point out any errors in our thinking actually
strengthen our conviction.

It would seem the only way to escape the echo chamber is from someone
inside it to realize an error, and point it out to those who trust them.
But this doesn't always work.  Often, instead of giving up our views, we
give up our trust.  We view them as a "traitor" or the like, someone
who's betrayed the truth.  You stop trusting them, rather than
considering what they say.  Voices of disagreement from within get
pushed quickly into the "them" category, and ignored at best, or viewed
as pariahs at worst.

As I said, none of this is new insight.  Plenty of people have made the
same observations countless times in the last few years (and I'd guess
if we looked we could find people saying similar things decades and
centuries ago too).  The question is, what can we do about it?  How can
we avoid falling into the same trap?  Is it even possible?  Is there
much to do besides "pick a side and hope it's the right one?"

One option is to look at the data itself, rather than trust sources.  In
an ideal world, that's what we'd do.  But it's time consuming, hard
work, and often we don't have the expertise to do the necessary
analysis.  I'd do this more when I was at my old job (when I had more
time, and better software for crunching numbers), and still try to do it
whenever I can these days, but for the vast majority of things, I just
don't have time for it.  I've got a scientific background, but only in a
fairly narrow field.  I'm not an economist, a climate scientist, a
census taker, etc.  I can do my rudimentary checks, but to a degree I
don't consider myself a trusted source on many of these
questions.

Another option is to make a conscious effort to read/listen to sources
outside our own echo chamber.  The danger here, though, is the tribalism
effect.  If we intentionally go looking for sources we expect to
disagree with, instead of openning our mind, it can actually re-inforce
our views by confirming our expectations of "them".  Finding sources you
sometimes disagree with can be useful, I think, as it keeps you
from expecting to agree or disagree up front, and forces you to evaluate
each point on a case by case basis.  But it can be tough to find sources
that don't tend to fall into the "us" or "them" categories most of the
time.

What do you guys think?  Is there much hope for objectivity, or are we
doomed by human nature to this kind of source picking?  Does it help
open our minds to talk to those of different views, or does it just make
us stronger believers?

We all think we're right, and that we're open minded and have selected
the "correct" sources, and yet we tend to end up with different sources.
It's easy to say "well, those guys believe crazy stuff because they
listen to X, Y, and Z!"  but it doesn't really convince them that their
"crazy" views are wrong (let alone crazy), and it doesn't help us come
to any kind of agreement.

Again, I'm not just talking about those things that we're probably
always going to have disagreement about:  religion, the future,
morality, etc.  I'm talking about objective reality stuff that we can't
seem to agree on.  Is the planet getting warmer?  Does radiometric
dating work?  Are taxes lower today than they were under Reagan?  Was
Obama born in Hawaii?  Did Fannie and Freddie do most of the subprime
lending, or did private banks do more?  Is the "heat index" a new term
introduced just recently by the government?  Do most biologists consider
evolution to be a fact?  All these kinds of questions and more divide us
into "us and them" positions, and evidence doesn't really seem to play
much part in the discussion, because the sides can agree on what sources
to trust to provide the data in the first place.  What can be done about
it?  Is there any hope for objectivity?

People can, and do, change their minds about deeply held beliefs.  But
in my experience, it's not usually new data that causes them to do so,
but rather a new source.  It takes someone they can trust telling them
to consider a different position.  Or, perhaps more to the point,
someone they trust telling them that this other position isn't
necessarily in opposition to all the other things they believe.  For
example, you can accept X that "they" say is true, without actually
having to agree with them on Y, and Z as well.  But often that voice
ends up being discarded and untrusted when it calls on us to consider
the possibility that we're wrong.  What makes the difference between the
two cases?  Why do we listen some times, and abandon the source in
others?

This brings up another factor I didn't mention before: the "clumping" of
ideas.  Because of the importance of sources, positions on unrelated
issues often get linked.  There's no real reason why the view that
climate change is a hoax should be correlated with pro-life views, or
that opposition to replacing social security with investment accounts
should correlate with acceptance of evolution, but ideas like these do
tend to end up correlating.  In part, I would argue, because a source
that doesn't fit neatly into the the "us" or "them" category won't be as
influential in affecting our views.  So once camps have defined
themselves, we end up with the somewhat illogical view that if we change
our mind about X, then all our other beliefs should suddenly be in doubt
as well, because if so-and-so was wrong about X, well, what else could
they have been wrong about?  The result of this is that we start to
think "well, I don't know much about X, but I know so-and-so was right
about Y, so I'm sure he's right on this too!"

So, a bit of a ramble, I know, and not really ending with a clear
question.  But what do you guys think?

I think we can start by building up trust ... and being careful of our allies. I'm still very upset with Al Gore for taking something which was gradually gaining scientific consensus and turning it into a political (and specifically democratic) talking point. People generally have a goodly amount of trust in the scientific community, in part because scientists take so long to be sure and transparent before making a big fuss. Politicians though ... it's exactly like you said.

and part of teh issue is also what kind of truth are we talking about- the more complex and uncertain the validity of a model the more likely disagreement is to occur. Which is why nobody still considers it a challenge to God's authority to say that the Earth is not the center of the universe, but evolution is still held to be such a challenge by a siginifigant portion of the population.

In hindsight it probably wasn't such a good idea to bother testing Socratic Dialectics against Rhetoric; the "Proselytizer of the day" at my college didn't seem too comfortable with the two-way street of the public forum, insisting that I "go someplace quiet and get right with Jesus".

It can be pretty hard to deal with rhetoric without being drawn into it yourself, but it's also predictable; when he tried to pull out the "Are you a Good Person?" line, all I could think of was Ray Comfort (Tip: It doesn't work if you don't stage it).

Before I was drawn away by my friend to check out her new puppy, I did manage to get him to say a bunch of things that definitely didn't help his case with the gathering crowd; it turns out there really are people like Jack T. Chick out there (though when I asked him if he knew about Jack Chick he said he was a pawn of Satan too, go figure), and admitting that you believe Catholics, Calvinists, Mormons and JWs are all going to hell because they worship Satan is a really big Rhetorical Faux Pas when people listening know from personal experience that they do no such thing.

I digress to it being a bad idea in hindsight, though; I suffer from acute social atrophy, and that workout made me feel sick all yesterday and today with dry mouth, jittering, and concentration-fatigue.

So I'd like to say that I'd probably not do it again anytime soon, but that's more than a hope than something I'm sure I could avoid.  Not very many people like the people who shout their message on the street corners, regardless of whether they agree with the message or not ("They're scaring people away" one of my Christian friends remarked).

But hey, it's a free country, and it's great that we have the freedom to go shouting out what we believe if we want and not have to worry about anything other than that hot feeling you get whenever you draw attention to yourself (or maybe that's just me).  Because if you can say what you want, then I can criticize it, and vice-versa.
--------------------------------

But speaking from the experience above, you gotta have respect for people who do go out there and speak to people who "aren't the choir".  That takes bravery, it's a very exhausting thing to do; you have less time to think and react than you do in an online forum.  I regret not being able to shake his hand at the end of it all, but I was running late.

I contrast that though to the people who wish to speak in the public forum but try to prevent anyone but the choir from participating; if you're not willing to handle the possibility of your claims being criticized, then you shouldn't present them in a context where criticism is the name of the game.
This message was last edited by the GM at 07:16, Thu 06 Oct 2011.

I suspect a lot of the extremists you're talking about stick to their message for a reason completely unrelated to religion; paranoia, an urge to strike out, previous hurts, or even serious brain imbalances. If someone is speaking with conviction that all Mormons worship Satan, it's basically a non-starter.