About the notion of deserving [thought experiment]

@Mopman a big optimist you are, aren't you?

@clousems the extent of your godlike power is simply to remove his ability to feel happiness. You can't change him and you can't change his actions. You can assume that he lives in this universe and that he's truly evil. That being said I don't see where your attack on "racially diverse, communally organized societies of anti-authoritarian lesbians" is coming from nor how is it relevant to this topic.

@Nisko123 said in #8:
> Thank G-d I'm religious (Judaism) - so many philosophical questions solved.
Another way to solve practically every question is to imagine that you are the only conscious being and that everything you see, hear, perceive, etc, is just an illusion, a creation of your mind, just like when you dream. Yet I don't know of any sensed person who believes that to be the case. In other words, solipsism solves every philosphical question, and yet that's not a valid argument to believe in solipsism. I'd argue that the same holds if you replace "solipsism" with "religion".
> Being secular was Such an intolerable pain.
Nah don't worry for me ;)
All the extracts about unbelievers will be burnt and so on make religion, if anything, less credible. Because it damn sounds like what someone would have written if they wanted to coerce you into being religious: since they can't convince you, they resort to fear of the unknown and to threats.

@FC-in-the-UK said in #11:
> @Mopman a big optimist you are, aren't you?
>
I do not want to believe that someone can act like that and be a stable , happy personality , so in that sense it's true. 8)

On a more pragmatic note , people who take pleasure in the pain of others in the pattern you are hypothesizing would be classified as narcissistic sociopaths.

DSM-5 classifies narcissistic sociopaths as a mental disorder which leads to the questions of capacity and culpability.

@FC-in-the-UK said in #11:
> @clousems the extent of your godlike power is simply to remove his ability to feel happiness. You can't change him and you can't change his actions. You can assume that he lives in this universe and that he's truly evil. That being said I don't see where your attack on "racially diverse, communally organized societies of anti-authoritarian lesbians" is coming from nor how is it relevant to this topic.

It's not just a question of my abilities. Is there an afterlife where he would be punished anyways? Do we assume I have omniscience? Would others, seeing his misfortune, make the consequent changes in rational behavior, even if his behavior remained the same?

The "racially diverse, communally organized societies of anti-authoritarian lesbians" is in reference to his being a selfish, racist, homophobic, mysoginistic, pro-Putin asshole.

@Mopman what I meant is that the idea that arseholery be incompatible with happiness is comforting, at least as comforting as the idea that evil will be punished in an afterlife. But the fact that an idea is comforting is not necessarily an argument in favour of this idea. Quite the opposite: in my opinion, it makes this idea more suspicious in the sense that one could be tempted to believe it not because it's true but because it's comforting.

@clousems for the question to have the meaning I intended, we shall assume there is no afterlife. We don't assume you have omniscience, and only Mr X will know about his own misfortune, so it won't affect others behaviour either.

As mentioned in the title, it's a thought experiment about the idea of "deserving", not about the various social aspects of punishment ;)

> The "racially diverse, communally organized societies of anti-authoritarian lesbians" is in reference to his being a selfish, racist, homophobic, mysoginistic, pro-Putin asshole.
Yep I got that but I still think it's mostly irrelevant, and that your footnote was ironic.

@FC-in-the-UK Understood , my focus is on " he likes to humiliate people and to see others suffer."

This would make him incapable of forming an intimate connection of trust and bonding with another person.

It would be difficult to function in a manner that would bring personal happiness unless of course you were a narcissistic sociopath.

Which leads back to the question of capacity and culpability and , as you mentioned in your reply to @clousems , without omniscience I could not remove his happiness since I would not be qualified to judge him.

I would not do anything, nothing good will come out of it and I would rather not inflict pain on anyone
, HOWEVER, if it would seem that such acts will save people/make more people happy in the long run then I will do it
by being a bad person he lost the defence of being innocent, I will always prioratize other people over him

I wouldn't remove his happiness but I would defintely change his notion of views towards certain fields cause I am God-like entity!

I'm not sure what the mind of a God-like entity could be like, but if I had those powers, I would lessen the impact or otherwise alleviate/solve the problem.

(argument repeat) Removing happiness probably wouldn't fix anything

@FC-in-the-UK A well-fed cat will kill more birds and mice at al than a hungry cat who must prey for food. I've seen my own scratching her back on the concrete sidewalk in the warm sun with her injured bird victim wobbling nearby. She relaxed and closed her eyes and flipped her tail in true regalia. Also another bird continually cried to lure the cat away I assume. Clearly this was the victim birds mate and they were of a pair bond type. Some birds mate for life some seasonally. I found it disturbing and clearly kitties are not disturbed at all. They kill for pleasure. and there are humans who feel the same way. Most of whom simply keep quiet and do what they must to avoid prison or trouble of hurting others. If you examine the healthcare industry you find a haven of sadistic psychopathothology. Fucking horror show. I hate it. I hate human suffering. Then the idea that there are humans who enjoy causing other humans pain is just out of range of what I can make sense of. Then this is compounded by the idea that suffering is not only important for growth but that it is necessary, that our very sole hope is somehow inextricably intertwined with unimaginable suffering..:is a bother. Then all mideival torture and execution and everything that happened in ww2 and with all unethical unwilling human 'medical' experimentation Ive read of it's ubiquitous..:is unspeakable. not literally unspeakable but if you look into it it doesnt take long to realize you wont be teaching any of this history to your young children while at the same time you know you MUST be teaching this history to every single person, contextualizing it, and trying to make sense of it for all who were conditioned into a state of complacent indifference complicit) . Its not they were all monsters who conducted these things but it takes brainwashing. this is precisely what can be averted through proper education. even now I wonder of to whom Im writing this right now. I like your thought exercise or whatever and I appreciate the intellect apparently where yourre coming from on this. And even as I say all this so far Ill add a bit further to be clear I had checked out all the way a while ago like dazed and confused for so long again you know led zepplin. and i wonder how many compartmentalized semi lucid intelects are out here in the world and what the hell they are like or doing or experiencing and so on...now all that said, how can you purport to know how anyone arrived to whatever condition models whatever behaviors you see? How do you guess what everything means to them? Or what they purpose in their actions? I don't know how to pinpoint a line between what is real (in the actual existing verifiable by everyone honest and participating-sense of the word) and imagined. No problem. Seriously. As I say 'no problem' somebody says 'good one'. While this is mockery yet it doesnt really hit, you know? Is it real? Absolutely. Did anyone else hear? Not on this planet, but maybe, i just dont know. This is a world apart from the notion of having checked out I mentioned before. Another whole separate world of bs altogether. I hope from the length and specificity of this comment you know that it is directly propotional to the value or my appraisal of the value of your thread. I know for a fact beyond any possibility of a doubt that people do not understand things very good especially others and the thought processes of others and their actions. So this is a very deep question indeed. What does it mean 'deserve'. No one deserves anything do we? We cant tell the end from the beginning. We cant create life although we cant certainly affect it. But we see an all too common trend of the free will of a rapist trumps the free will of the unwilling victim. How is this possible?! I mean in the philisophical sense of it we can say that God is so commited to our freedom of choice as to allow it. Clearly this is a paradox as it flies in the face of the free will of the victim and we are left with a question just as much if not more so than when we began. Again, what is deserved? We need to know the consequences to begin to judge such things. And we just do not know the final end of anything at all . so what is deserved? I know that I dont know. But I personally hate human suffering although I do believe it is a major factor in developing good character. now I'm fractured in a schism . split mind schizo annd obsolete despite having spent some considerable time thinking on precisely these matters because they matter and I care and it doesnt matter. and it makes no difference. so what is deserved. tell me, dude. Oh yeah, so cat would chill like that until the bird would try to run away then quickly overtake it again, submit it and then go back to chillin leaving the bird alive and injured and also while distressing the birds pair bond partner who perched and flitted nearby just at a safe distance calling and calling... was disappointed with the cat but this is who they are. does it mean that this is also at least in part who God is as well? hope not, eh?

If chimps could talk they'd probably tell us God is THE HOLY BANANA TREE ...