Compared to examples in which it does solve problems? are you serious here? Seeing as I do research in economics, I truly dislike debating it with people who don't have a preliminary understanding.

I agree with some of this, firstly I agree that those that can earn more to donate are limited in number and as such are limited in the influence they can have an without a doubt not everyone can make this move nor would I advocate everyone looking to maximise earnings in order to donate more.

I disagree with some of it, while I agree that the charity and NGO sector needs skilled leaders I also think the skills required may necessitate the type of sacrifice needed to work in less lucrative jobs. If someone is working to address global poverty and knows that for $2k on average a life can be saved expecting to earn $200k raises some questions of consistency. I doubt the people involved with Givewell for instance earn as much as they would have prior to leaving finance. I think very smart people can be motivated by things other than money.

I also disagree that you don't solve problems by throwing money at them, I think some problems are addressed by large injections of cash assuming the organisations have the room for funding. I accept that systemic problems require more than just money but appropriately targeted giving can deliver results.

I do have concerns with charities in terms of effectiveness. I am suspicious of just how much good the ice bucket challenge will actually provide given concerns around the ALS's room for funding and the potential for charity cannibalisation. I suspect we'll know in a couple of years.

Oh, right. The Mightybooshian narrative. If you just ignore the situations where the logic doesn't work, then it simply works every single time!

Yes, it works every single time. That's clearly what I was saying. This post of yours above is purposely disingenous and every time I talk to you I get a strong feeling that you somehow want to prove to other members of the forum that I'm wrong. I feel this also stems from your propensity for highly dichomotous thinking. I believe that more often than not, the truth lies somewhere inbetween two opposites while you believe that it must either be on one end of the spectrum or the other.

We will hardly agree because I choose to reconcile two opposing views, and you simply believe that this kind of thinking leaves one open to too much criticism - hence you avoid it. Your intention for debating is to be 'right' and my intention is to learn. I am not learning anything from you and haven't since we started this conversation, perhaps because you're so pre-occupied with proving me wrong, rather than engaging in a constructive dialogue.

This tends to frustrate me and then I end up falling into your dichotomous (who's right and who's wrong) style of debate. But no more. No more.

Right. So if you say "X works" and I say "X doesn't work" then I'm the one being disingenuous because I'm ignoring the time that "X works" and you're not being disingenuous even though you're ignoring the times that "X doesn't work."

If the truth lies somewhere in between, then why are you so adamant about your Randian perspective?

But you haven't shown how the two opposing viewpoints can be reconciled. You just kind of pretend it all works out. Kind of like what you've expressed so far in your economic philosophy.

The constructive dialogue comes from you actually exploring your own viewpoint. I've asked you questions about your viewpoint, and you haven't really addressed them in a meaningful manner.

It took me several tries to even admit that you're nowhere near Rand when it comes to your underlying philosophy. It took me quoting several resources before you even did that.

This leads me to believe that you've never really thought out your position, and have kind of taken a generic psuedo-axiomatic viewpoint. You know that Rand said certain things and you have some sort of philosophy built on what you think you know about evolution, and you're just kind of running with it.

You didn't even touch the 10-day old child. That's clearly an area where your gut disagrees with your brain. Your gut wants to talk about "love" and your brain wants to focus on the economics. That's an internal contradiction that you can learn from if you were willing to explore it. You can find weaknesses in your assumptions and resolve them. But all that happens on the inside.

I have made no claim that your basic philosophy is wrong. I've said you've been wrong about how close your view are to Rand's (which is true). Everything else is about taking what you've said and seeing what the consequences are. There are also realities that pose challenges to your expanded views. This requires at least some attempt to reconcile them meaningfully, otherwise you really do get the Mightybooshian narrative again, and I don't claim that it's impossible to get the pieces to fit back together again.

The bolded isn't really accurate. One of the largest factors correlated with a person's income is their parent's income.



I think the argument for there being a causal connection here is very strong. For instance, parent's income is also positively correlated with educational outcomes (which has a large causal effect on future income), with location (which also has causal effect on future income) and, at least anecdotally, we can all see how the network effects of a parent's income can provide boosts to their children's income through internship possibilities, better medical care, direct hiring into related businesses, legacy admissions to elite colleges and so on.

And this is personal experience, but at least my understanding of the middle class goal is not that you'll work hard and pass a significant amount of wealth to your children, but rather that you'll provide them with the opportunities to themselves work hard, make a good living, and so on (i.e. have a good income). But this is not poverty; the middle class are not poor. Passing on wealth to me is an issue that, at least in the U.S., is primarily the concern of the upper class.

Sorry, forgot to include the link (PDF).

While China is the biggest driver (bringing about 680 million people out of extreme poverty between 1990 and 2010), it is not an isolated phenomenom. According to an estimate by the Economist, GDP growth in developing countries (excluding China) averaged about 3.8% annually between 2000-2010. They estimate that this economic growth brought 280 million people out of extreme poverty. Anyway, even if this is primarily China--well, you can draw a fairly clear line from the liberalization of their markets to an increase in GDP growth to a massive decrease in extreme poverty. Still seems like a win.

Good! Then we are in agreement about the main point.

It does--these numbers are in real GDP. As for the future, I would say that we should go with the economic system with a proven track record of success over a more speculative one.

I guess I don't see see how his moral views are that confusing. He has identified happiness as the primary good (hence his talk about utiliarianism), and identified more individualistic and self-directed moral attitudes (such as personal integrity, ambition and "great" accomplishment, and autonomy) as the best means of achieving this end. This is basically a mashup of ideas from Aristotle and Nietszche filtered through a capitalistic perspective.

Obviously there is room for disagreement here. For instance, we can disagree that this ethos really is the best way for people to achieve the goal of happiness, and contrast it with a more communitarian vision, such as socialism or Confucianism, or a love-based ethos, such as Christianity. We can criticize the inherent elitism of this kind of ethic as not being a truly universal ethic. We can even disagree with the desired end-goal, and say that instead people should be directed not towards happiness, but rather towards bringing glory to God, etc.

It's true that he hasn't worked out the details of his moral system very much, or maybe even probed it for internal consistency, but it seems to me fine as an initial presentation of his moral views.

Largely yes, you've understood my position better than the very person that I am talking to about it, perhaps because you're not so preoccupied with proving me 'wrong' and I've heard Aaron use that word far too many times in our conversation to indicate any intent for constructive dialogue.
Yes, one may disagree on this front but it would be hard to justify how these particular frameworks excel at facilitating progress: and if they don't - then what justification could one provide for giving their children and grand-children a future that is no better than our own? From this perspective, ultimately these frameworks appear to be more selfish.
Every species of life comprises of a hierarchy (whether social or physical or intellectual etc.): power dynamics are an inherent attribute of all species on earth - without power dynamics, progress is severely slowed.
This is fine, but in what way does such a framework facilitate progress? and if it doesn't - then what justification could one provide for giving their children and grand-children a future that is no better than our own? Once again, this also seems like a more selfish framework.
We can always work on our philosophies. I don't deny that, but I do feel that I have presented mine coherently and consistently.

It's obviously better to have it aborted.

Richard Dawkins compares Texas 'clock boy' Ahmed Mohamed to ISIS killer

By Tim Hume, CNN
Updated 7:58 AM ET, Wed November 25, 2015 | Video Source: CNN


Ahmed Mohamed was arrested and led from his Texas high school
Ahmed Mohamed receives job offers, White House invite
Ahmed Mohamed was arrested and led from his Texas high school
Irving police chief speaks on teen clock arrest
Ahmed Mohamed was arrested and led from his Texas high school
Muslim student brings clock to school, gets arrested
Ahmed Mohamed (2-L), a 14-year-old Sudanese Muslim teenager from the United States who became an overnight sensation after a Texas teacher mistook his homemade clock for a bomb, looks on during an interview in the capital Khartoum on October 15, 2015. AFP PHOTO / ASHRAF SHAZLY (Photo credit should read ASHRAF SHAZLY/AFP/Getty Images)
Ahmed Mohamed's family seeks $15 million, apologies
Teen slams clock arrest white house invite mss orig_00003715.jpgNow Playing
Teen slams White House over invite
bill maher ahmed mohamed clock controversy orig pkg_00002404.jpg
Maher: Teen's clock looks like a bomb
Ahmed Mohamed was arrested and led from his Texas high school
Ahmed Mohamed receives job offers, White House invite
Ahmed Mohamed was arrested and led from his Texas high school
Irving police chief speaks on teen clock arrest
Ahmed Mohamed was arrested and led from his Texas high school
Muslim student brings clock to school, gets arrested
Ahmed Mohamed (2-L), a 14-year-old Sudanese Muslim teenager from the United States who became an overnight sensation after a Texas teacher mistook his homemade clock for a bomb, looks on during an interview in the capital Khartoum on October 15, 2015. AFP PHOTO / ASHRAF SHAZLY (Photo credit should read ASHRAF SHAZLY/AFP/Getty Images)
Ahmed Mohamed's family seeks $15 million, apologies
Teen slams clock arrest white house invite mss orig_00003715.jpg
Teen slams White House over invite
bill maher ahmed mohamed clock controversy orig pkg_00002404.jpg
Maher: Teen's clock looks like a bomb
Story highlights
In discussion of "clock boy" case, Richard Dawkins tweeted a link about a child ISIS killer
Texas teen Ahmed Mohamed was arrested for bringing a clock to school that was mistaken for a bomb
Dawkins, an atheist scientist who has been critical of Ahmed, was slammed for comparison
London (CNN)Eminent British scientist Richard Dawkins has sparked a firestorm of criticism on social media by comparing Ahmed Mohamed, the Texas teenager whose school project was mistaken for a bomb, to a young ISIS killer.

Dawkins, a leading voice in the atheist movement, was reacting to news that the Mohamed family was demanding $15 million in damages and an apology from city and school officials in Irving, Texas, over their treatment of the teen.

In September, the 14-year-old, who is Muslim, was detained, questioned and hauled off in handcuffs after he brought a handmade clock to school, which a teacher thought could have been a bomb.

"Don't call him 'clock boy' since he never made a clock. Hoax Boy, having hoaxed his way into the White House, now wants $15M in addition!" Dawkins tweeted Tuesday.


The evolutionary biologist has been vocal in his belief that the case -- which made Ahmed a cause celebre, prompted the hashtag #IStandWithAhmed to trend, and led to a personal invitation to the White House from U.S. President Barack Obama -- was a "hoax."

He has repeatedly insisted that Ahmed did not make a clock, but rather "took a clock out of its case and put it in a box," and has questioned the teen's motives in doing so.


'Picking on a kid'
When Twitter users chided the 74-year-old scientist for "picking on a kid," he responded by tweeting a link to a news story about a child ISIS killer.

"'But he's only a kid.' Yes, a 'kid' old enough to sue for $15M those whom he hoaxed. And how old is this 'kid'?" tweeted Dawkins, linking to a story about a young ISIS killer beheading a victim.


The tweet provoked an even greater backlash.

"Richard Dawkins, analogizing a kid who modded a clock in a way he found insufficiently inventive to a child executioner," tweeted Angus Johnston.


"Am I missing your point?" tweeted Lisajane Ellis. "Because there's no comparison between deception and murder. Disappointed."


"I used to look up to you. Your books opened my mind (when) I was a kid. Now you're doing sloppy reactionary thinking; saddens me," tweeted Renee Stephen.


Charges of anti-Muslim bias
Many accused Dawkins, an outspoken critic of Islam, of having an anti-Muslim bias for drawing the comparison.

"And it's just a mere coincidence that they're both Muslim? C'mon Richard, surely you can see how this looks?" tweeted Aaron San Filippo.



"Why do you hate Mu(s)lims Mr. Dawkins?" tweeted @boringfileclerk. "For some who upholds reason above all, I find your tweets disturbing."


Only a kid 'not a knockdown defense'
Dawkins responded by tweeting that two individuals' "young AGES are being compared, nothing else," and that his point was that "simply that being a 'kid' doesn't protect you from criticism."

He later mused that perhaps a comparison to the killers of James Bulger, a 2-year-old British boy who was abducted, tortured and murdered by two 10-year-olds in 1993, "would have been a better example."


The response to his comparison, he tweeted, reminded him of when he had said "I don't have to read Mein Kampf to condemn Nazism." "The numpties (fools) thought I was accusing Muslims of being Nazis!" he wrote.


At the time of publication, Ahmed had not responded to a CNN request for comment on Dawkins' remarks and had not commented via his verified Twitter account.

FWIW, I pretty much agree with Dawkins here.

Twitter is a reactionary sewer, you're often on the right side if Twitter hates you.

Dawkins is 100% correct.

This is the bible story of how jesus allegedly healed the blind man:

After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man's eyes. "Go," he told him, "wash in the Pool of Siloam" (this word means "Sent"). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.

They also did not know anything about germs, sanitation, Down's Syndrome, or a lot of other things.

Now we remove cataracts with surgery, people wash their hands regularly, disinfect water, and test for Down's Syndrome during pregnancy.

Yeah, philosophically he's very narrow.

Dawkins mostly says stuff that's completely correct, but is unable to see the nuance and philosophies and prejudices that create opposing arguments, so merely ends up reasserting his (obviously correct) views rather than helping them out of their deluded maze.

I've always hated Dawkins, but it's actually quite hilarious, now that I think about it. Like two broken, well armed robots in a Japanese ring trying to do battle but they can't quite find each other.

Really? It is immoral not to abort? The statement isn't that it is ok to elect to abort, it is that it is actually wrong not do so.

On what grounds do you say this? And don't give me any crap about species or society, as neither you nor Dawkins know **** about potential ecological consequences of aborting all babies with Down's syndrome.

Too date there has not been a eugenic practice that isn't utter nonsense, nonsense rooted in pseudo-scientific babble and personal prejudice. That should be cause for treading carefully, and at the very least it tells us that crashing in bombastically like you and Dawkins do here is at best pseudo-scientific nonsense rooted in prejudice.

At worst you are fascists.

I actually like Dawkins when he's writing biology, he's interesting and engaging but his philosophy is awful, similarly to Harris he takes standard kinda lines but without the ability to recognise error or support them when challenged.

The idea behind aborting kids with Down Syndrome is about minimising the suffering of the child, it's straight from Peter Singer, who Dawkins references, but Singer may be wrong on preference utilitarian grounds, Singer if challenged could at least have a crack at explaining his position Dawkins doesn't.

Well, let's do a comparison.

Being a modern liberal, I assume you're 100% in favor of abortion. That is, the unborn kid is far less important than the "right" of a mother not to have to carry a child she'd prefer not to have. Even if the reasons are frivolous - for example, she doesn't want a big belly for cosmetic reasons - the law upholds that "right".

Society currently believes that a women is allowed to kill an unborn child for frivolous reasons if she so chooses. Thus, those frivolous reasons are more important than the life of the unborn child, and all of its potential.

So. Widespread death of unborn children is mandated - certainly against the child's will if they had a say in it!!! - to protect female whims (since a good reason is NOT needed for abortion).

Yet a far smaller number of deaths of unborn children can't be mandated, even when mandating such would protect highly dysfunctional children from suffering, and would protect parents and their normal children from a lifetime of suffering and waste and slavery, and the wider community from a massive expense (in human lives measured in unhappy man-hours) spent caring for the dysfunctional.

Do you think those two opinions are congruent?
Abortion is worse than eugenics. It's large scale genocide of the unborn in favor of the whims of a dominant privileged group (females). You can't simultaneously say that aborting down syndrome babies - for extremely valid reasons - is "eugenics" and therefore bad, when doing exactly the same thing to those babies - and healthy ones, no less, that can live full and rich and productive lives - is committing exactly the same sin of preferencing a state of mind or a preferred state of the world over life.

Well written. Impressive. Enlightening.

To be clear neither Singer, or Dawkins as far as I know, advocate for the view that abortions of foetuses with abnormalities be mandated. Only that it is morally correct to do so. My position is that even on the utilitarian grounds that they employ they are wrong.

dereds, where is the line, though? At what point do we say "ok, enough". What IQ level? What burden? What level of feeling and awareness?

We forbid torture, yet knowingly have kids that live tortured lives. We forbid slavery, yet effectively force parents, once the kid is born, to be a slave for that disabled child for the rest of their lives.

We imprison, separate from young, raise for food, treat as property, kill at will, and torture (via experimentation) animals that probably have more nuanced feelings, intelligence, and sense of the world than many down syndrome kids.

You don't think it's all a little nuts?

You don't understand the pro-choice position (the bolded word is where you go wrong). Being pro-choice means that you believe that women should have the legal right to an abortion for their own private reasons, whatever they might be. Generally this is justified by some combination of claims about the moral value of the fetus being below that of the mother or on the basis of general liberal principles against government interference in people's private lives.

There is no implication on the basis of these principles to the claim that abortion should be mandated in some cases. In fact, I would say that the second justification cited implies the opposite! Thus, when you say that "widespread death of unborn children is mandated," you are wrong.

Of course, there are other possible justifications for legal access to abortion that are consistent with mandating abortion in some cases. However, those are not the standard views of most pro-choice people in the US (at least, not anecdotally).


Your views of what it is like to live with a Down's Syndrome family member are pretty weird.

However, the main point continues to be the same: your argument fails because mandating abortion is in fairly obvious conflict with basic pro-choice principles.

Not sure where the bolded comes from. I think all legal systems give preference to some states of mind or state of the world over people's lives.

Firstly it is not yet possible to determine any of this prenatal. But more than this any mandating of abortions, which no one serious advocates for, is a violation of the woman's autonomy. The line is whether the mother prenatal or parents postnatal want to continue and whether medical experts are prepared to release the child to the parents care.

We don't parents are entitled to place children in the care of the state. I also think your views of what it is like to live with a Down's Syndrome family member are weird.

I think we systematically fail animals but this is not an argument in favour of mandating abortion. I am open to the suggestion that post birth abortions for babies incapable of some minimal standard of life be available.

Hang on, no one is arguing for requiring abortion. Simply that it's immoral not to abort a down syndrome. Just like society believes it's immoral not to abort a perfectly healthy child when a woman decides - even on a whim - that she wants it killed.

People make the best of horrible situations, put on brave faces, but having a kid with down syndrome is worse than a family member being struck with a debilitating illness requiring frequent if not constant care. It's not a nice state of affairs.

There is no logic connecting "the right to abortion is morally just" and "it is immoral to not abort fetuses with Down's syndrome". They are different conclusions from different arguments. One is rooted in the right to control one's own body, the other in some hodgepodge pseudo-babble about "best for the species" which is based on the loosest of conjencture and smacks of fascist eugenics.

You might find both equally abhorrent, but that's your view. Finding two things equally abhorrent still does not mean they are views based on the similar premises.

There is no "science" behind eugenics. If history has taught us anything, it is that generalized "who gets to conceive what"-politics tend to fail in miserably horrible ways.

Jesus'