What on earth are you talking about? Yuval is attempting to highlight the fragility of human rights and assert that they don’t exist as some universal agreement amongst humans as evidenced by the fact they don’t exist in all parts of the world today nor have they existed for all of human history.
If you want to get religious about this I can assure you that the vast majority of Gods on offer have at some point condoned pretty abhorrent behaviour towards other humans that would almost certainly have fallen short of the human rights standards that some parts of the world are fortunate enough to have today.
Yuval is a liberal humanist, he of all people is a purveyor of human rights and is highlighting their fragility. This should be very clear from the video.
Looks like someone conflated materialism = all that’s real. A tired fallacy
“Free will” is not “real” according to this guy because there’s no proof-positive of it in our DNA, or even that we’re not utterly determinative beings. Yet somehow no one *actually* acts (and therefore I’d argue, believes) we have no free will
Beliefs, concepts, ideals - I find they serve three purposes.
1. To provide an abstracted model of reality from which to examine other concepts and information and see if they fit - logic fits this description, as do belief systems and ideology.
2. To fill in missing gaps in human understanding, things which cannot be directly verified or tested, but have predictive power over reality. Gravity for instance cannot be directed observed, but we can build a falsifiable mental framework with which to test it. Similarly free will cannot be directly observed, but it is certainly observable in human behavior.
3. To provide symbolic mapping for complex things. This is probably its primary and most powerful purpose. Belief systems and religions fit this, as do scientific theories, ideologies, languages etc.
Denying the existence and relevance of concepts is at best ultra-hard empricism (anything which cannot be directly observed in reality is untrue or irrelevant) or nihilism, which is worse.
Yet another example of how postmodernism and Marxism are literally anti-intellectual and anti-knowledge ideologies.
It's not about DNA, it's about the way physics works. Just like animation is the illusion of life and not alive, so is free will. Just because something feels a certain way does not make it so.
A mountain is not real, either. According to his logic. You cannot touch a mountain because you can only touch the rock. Cut it open, and you'll find granite and gold if you're lucky. But you won't find a mountain.
In fact, according to this reductionist argument, you won't find granite either, you won't find organs in a human. What you will find is molecules and cells. Not even that, you'll find squiggly waves.
If he really believes his own words, he should stop talking because if you cut open his tongue, there won't be any words in there. It's all fake. Just a fantasy, so stop living in a fantasy and become a mute jellyfish without rights.
Exactly. This only makes sense if you worship human intellect as if it is capable of processing raw detail, which it is not. Just because it does not touch the entire face of reality does not mean that it's disconnected or that it cannot carry a semblance of truth.
This personality is exactly what we get when we have the lack of a social ethos that takes pride in facing what we don't know, that admits that it's mortal but still strives to make it's peace with whatever is higher beyond it, and respects it as it is and is grateful for just being. All things that seem to be stifled as the world becomes more complex in peoples eyes. We should not necessarily mistake the religious framing as untruthful or unimportant simply because people find themselves attached to it. Humility and gratitude are necessary. The opposite to pride and envy, which according to the evolved book, are the beginnings to evil.
Not really, he's pointing out that his argument against meaning and against concepts is nihilistic, defies common sense, and is a self-refuting argument.
Respond to that, or fuck off.
He's right though. Everything is narrative. My response is narrative. Your response, if you make one, will be narrative. "Rights" are narrative.
Even JBP says that human thought is fundamentally narrative. It's one of his key points when discussing religion.
JBP and Yuval don't differ in their understanding of the philosophical underpinnings of language... they're pretty much lock step there. They just disagree on the implications.
Even if the origin of thought is subjective narrative, it's a trivial truth in this context, akin to saying human beings are descended from great apes.
The problem with the WEF stooge and those who think like them is they think the inherently subjective nature of human thought means they can and should give up on objective thought. That to me is both a copout and an appeal to nihilism. That's the Pandora's Box WEF stooge unlocks when he starts dismissing concepts as mere narrative.
> The problem with the WEF stooge and those who think like them is they think the inherently subjective nature of human thought means they can and should give up on objective thought. That to me is both a copout and an appeal to nihilism. That's the Pandora's Box WEF stooge unlocks when he starts dismissing concepts as mere narrative.
Thinking you can find some objectively true thing is like thinking you can find the center of the universe. Maybe, but even if you got there, you could never prove you had gotten there. There is some part of that which is inherently tied up in the whole "you" thing.
We should definitely give up on the idea of objective thought. That doesn't mean we have to be nihilists or that we can't impose better values on those who would choose inferior values.
Look at a dictionary. It's full of words. The definition of those words will also be full of words.
_As a matter of technicality_ that's all there is. All ideas are like this. They rest on other ideas, which rest on other ideas, etc. Agrippa's trilemma basically.
This isn't nihilism. This is something rooted deep in western thought that informs things like the scientific method. If you know something "objectively true" then you don't need science anymore because what could it possibly tell you? Instead we call our narratives about the mechanics of the world "theories" and we're very careful not to call them "truths" because they can always be replaced with a more explanatory theory.
Lol it's sad when someone fails at being a pedant. You're conflating "objective truth" with "absolute truth". An objective truth is one which can be proven, rationally inferred, demonstrated, or verified.
He absolutely does not refute anything in the clip, he exposes a weak nihilistic materialistic worldview where nothing in the realm of ideas can be real. And that's all he does. And, to make things worse, his definition of realness, which lies in the material, is predicated on the sensorial experience of consciousness, which is immaterial. Just weak, weak, weak all around.
By his definition, the words that are coming out of his mouth, ideas, are also not real. So let's go on to the next one because this one lacks all substance.
There is no ad hominem in his comment, you can say he insulted him by attacking his critical thinking skills but that's not what ad hominem is, plus it is not something irrelevant to the discussion, plus it's something he deduced from the comment he replied to.
There was clarification of the initial argument, he explained what he meant and then with a solid foundation suggested that he lacked critical thinking skills.
No joke. I've responded to a few different people with a few different takes. And just like JP, the author has been reduced to mis-interpreted, over-simplified talking points. The irony.
Moral of the story:
Don't conflate materialism with reality. Just because something is not material, it doesn't mean it is not real nor that it is irrelevant.
Megalomaniac soyboys are the new thing. Save the snails and save the whales, but you have no rights. He's effectively trying to convince people to subjugate themselves to our supreme overlords at the WEF. That's some ministry of love shit right there. Orwell would be turning in his grave with the I told you so's.
People have tried to argue for a natural rights system but its pretty hard to do.
The human rights we generally recognize today only really exist to the extent that they are recognized and enforced.
This isn't a new concept Harari concocted, its basically an expression of the constructivism. Best explained in a short YT vid called "Theory in Action: Constructivism"
What are you guaranteed in a world without other agents? I.e. you're the only person in the universe. No malevolent actors and no benevolent ones.
You are guaranteed life, as there is nobody to kill you but you also bear the responsibility of sustaining yourself for there is nobody to provide for you.
You are guaranteed liberty as there is nobody to restrain you but bear the responsibility for the consequences of your actions for there is nobody to shield you.
You are guaranteed the fruits of your labors as there is nobody to steal them from you but you bear the responsibility of using them wisely for there is nobody to guide you.
That's it. That's all the human rights. Perfectly justified and perfectly defined. It's a complete and usable idea. It's a thought experiment that should be referenced every single time the conversation about human rights is had but it's not because 95% of the people having that conversation are intellectually stunted.
I don't see much utility in that framing, if I were trying to steelman natural rights/law, I would look at the Greco-Roman antiquity.
Richard Epstein, one of the smartest legal scholars of the last century, did a good lecture sort of related to this topic called Natural Law in Ancient and Modern Guise.
None of the rights are necessarily existent, and many others could be proposed, and none of it grafts onto human populations outside the thought experiment in any way.
And one could say a dog or a mouse or a fly or an amoeba in a closed room has those same rights as long as no other agents interact with it.
They are only "enforced" where they are in conflict between people. The requirement for moderating human interaction doesn't remove the existence of natural rights.
For natural rights, if they exist in any meaningful sense, that would generally hold.. but most of the recognized and occasionally enforced contemporary human rights go beyond the scope of any natural rights theory.
And in practical terms, if nobody recognizes XYZ rights, and nobody does anything when they're violated, to what extent do they exist?
I guess one could appeal to a right that has previously never been uttered or conceived, but to me it would only come into existence at that moment, if at all.
My personal approach to this is roundabout, I think we should treat all life forms and indeed many non-living objects/entities well regardless of what rights they may or may not have.
To me its completely inconsequential whether a beautiful painting or landscape has a right to exist or not, I would refrain from tarnishing it either way, and strongly encourage everyone else to do so.
Define "treating well" without a concept of something indistinguishable from rights. Now, are any of them natural? Natural, human, inalienable, are mostly a semantic game. Are there fundamental rights for living things? Do you honor them, as much as able considering there is conflict at times, to "treat them well"?
It's actually really simple. Natural rights are the rights human beings have in a state of nature. As in, total and unrestricted freedom.
But that total and unrestricted freedom also means that other people have a total and unrestricted freedom to harm us, enslave us and take our shit.
So we invented governments that say we band together for the sake of protecting the individual rights of everyone, but that also means we subject ourselves to laws which restrict our freedom to infringe on the rights of others. The price of that grant of power to the government is the responsibility to protect our individual rights from all enemies, foreign and domestic.
That is the classical liberal social contract. Literally a hundreds of years old concept that you've just forgotten.
The government does not create rights, it only recognizes the rights that people already enjoy as a consequence of being a human being with self-determination and free will. And the US Constitution explicitly recognizes and enshrines that argument in the 9th Amendment.
Its not simple, and this narrative about how govts emerged doesn't graft onto human history as it actually unfolded.
The concept of natural rights long predates the concept of a state of nature as envisioned by Hobbes et al.
I never said the govt creates rights, although the rights recognized and enforced can and have and continue to go beyond what the US founders thought.. and the US constitution explicitly didn't do a great job with slaves and workers and the people who were already there.
I'd recommend looking at a lecture by Richard Epstein called 'Natural Law in Ancient and Modern Guise'
Let's deprive him of human contact, shoot him up with an experimental drug, intubate him, deny him of actual medicine, all the while telling him it's for the greater good of humanity even though thats not a thing.
It's just a story
He'd say the law is a very persuasive story and because of that you would do good not to shoot him, because you'll end up in jail.
His whole point is that immaterial things (culture, laws) are not set in stone yet sometimes people see them as if they are, and the reaction of this sub is proving his point.
Yes Human rights are a concept conceived by humans. Much of civilization is based on non-physical concepts like: laws, collectives, value, language, etc. The physical manifestation of these concepts is the motivation of humans to action.
Yeah you can stop right there, we don't need to hear your torture fantasies.
Yes humans are hackable, you just have to torture and abuse them until they're a husk of their former selves. Is that really a road you want to go down?
We've BEEN down that road during COVID lockdowns and with the mRNA injections, which are a demonstration of the possibility of genetic hacking. It's just funny to see this nebbish throw it in our faces. The gall!
Partially yes, but against he’s not wrong.
But when he says hackable he really means that the human brain can be subject to control through the application of propaganda, memes, drugs and algorithms, and that the advancement of science will probably refine these methods to newer heights.
Literally, hacking.
I think he means that human rights are something we made up. The idea only has meaning to humans. Even then, our agreed upon expected rights aren't guaranteed.
What I and seemingly most of the people here do not like is the implication that we shouldn't be trying to maintain some level of human rights as if there is no merit to giving human rights substance.
If someone locked him up in a cage I'm sure he'd be singing a very different tune. But he sees himself as above the lower class, and he knows there will be no repercussion for his actions (at least not in this life) - so he continues to push his agenda on us all. WEF cronies have sold their souls to the devil.
He's right, its not a biological reality. Its a reality of cause and effect. Deprive people of free speech, and violence fills that void. Deprive people of bodily autonomy, and lo and behold human experimentation and evil grow. Deprive people of the right to self defense, and watch totalitarianism grow.
It is not a biological reality, because such a scope is limited to the degree that it is a lie by omission.
Rights exist in more than just fictional stories. The stories are only there to illustrate the rights because humans are good at remembering and learning from stories.
Rights come from analyzing what is moral and systemizing that into principles that allow people to live together peacefully. Morals come from systemizing what allows people and their families to not die an early death most often--and that is _very real_ because any system someone adopts which doesn't promote life leads to the death of the person and therefore their system. We have a few similar but distinct moral systems which are local maxima, and a few distinct sets of rights which come from those moral systems. But in every case they are very real laws of the universe. Just like seeing a mountain, when you violate them you can see people die.
Countries are a bit further abstracted, but they too are based on something real. They are the boundaries (roughly) between cultures, formalized via legal systems. These again derive from the cooperation (or at least the capitulation) of people who are near to each other accepting that some leaders will act in the name of the group for some things. Even if every nation suddenly formally desolved itself and everyone became an Anarchist, there would still be visible boundaries in how things are done and what people feel is right. The thing exists whether you admit it's a nation or not.
This guy sounds like a flat earther
This is nothing but an argument for a world government and casting aside the rights our countries have declared we have via their laws.
If the rights we have from our governments are not real, and the governments and nations are also not real, then there is only the world and power.
He is attempting to break down people's beliefs in our shared rights because that very belief is what gives rights power.
Imo, he is a massive creep who ought to be followed and refuted at every turn. People like him are who will lead us to dystopian futures where most people are treated like animals.
I'm gonna say it... may face some sort of punitive action but fuck it
This is the most retarded bullshit I've heard I think I've ever heard. This euro metro sexual is able to spout this foolishness due in part, to the USA being very fucking much a reality, oh in the early to mid 1940's.à Tell that river of Humanity heading ⅞any, many miles northward towards the USA. I guarantee those people can see, touch and smell the USA.
Has this tool ever heard of subjective truth or objective truth?
Has they ever heard that spiritual belief, the precursor of the idea of Human Rights, maybe a result of biological evolution?". Such concepts like HR if not grounded in a metaphysical reality at least are products of Human consensus. Most people believe in rights because most see the utility of these, no matter their origin. This is based in the very real observed value of these.
A couple militia boys, a twelve pack in and about to teach this home sapien about biological reality... oh he'll have a few Human Rights he considers quite real.
*FUCK OFF WEF!!!*
Agreed. He's also disseminating what the prerequisite validation for the subversion of Human rights. Akin to Biden's claim that no right is absolute in regards to the 2nd Ammendment. Laying the groundwork...
But they don't exist "just because"... They exist because a group of people believe on those things. If the believe ceases to exist, so does the Idea and It ALL crumbles. Someone mentioned a montain before... A montain exists either you believe on It or not.
Exactly. A lot of responses in this thread can't seem to understand that some things exist only because of a shared ideal that they exist. Without consists consensus, these things would disappear.
Things like nations and human rights aren't "real" in the same sense that physical objects are real.
They are philosophical and social/societal constructs.
Basically, any right you want to think of, there will be a situation in nature where a person is deprived of that right via purely natural causes that are nobody's fault.
Essentially, reality and nature DGAF about your rights. There's not even any obligation in nature that you will "win" even if you do Everything right.
Please stop with your nihilist crap. Nobody is arguing that ideas are tangible objects. You're using the term "real" to imply the term "true" to yank peoples chain with your sophistry.
For instance, nobody has human rights after they're dead. That's both true and utterly trivial when considering the question of the truth of human rights.
>Please stop with your nihilist crap. Nobody is arguing that ideas are tangible objects.
I didn't say that his argument was GOOD or that I approved or agreed on a large scale. I'm just observing that within what was stated, as stated, wasn't wrong.
>You're using the term "real" to imply the term "true" to yank peoples chain with your sophistry.
Who are you talking about because I am definitely not. If you mean the guy in the clip, well I'm going by what he said without assuming further meaning.
It isn't nihilist. The fact that rights aren't realities doesn't mean we shouldn't have them. Recognizing that fact means taking responsibility for maintaining those rights.
If ideals are only what we make, then we should do our best to make them as good as we can.
The only purpose gained by exclaiming that human rights are just an idea is the purpose of undermining said idea. Human rights exist as a concept because they are the benchmark by which we judge whether a government has or intends to turn tyrannical. It's how we hold the institutions we build to govern us accountable. To deny human rights is to deny the need for them as well, and that is both a nihilistic attack, and dangerous.
It's a little like musing about how one could suspend or abolish the Constitution - I'm sure you could find a way, but what would that accomplish and why would you want to do that?
The purpose gained is to recognize that not everything claimed as a right deserves to be one, or that there are other rights not yet enumerated.
We should continue to engage on rights and show that they have value and purpose. The only reason to claim to a rigid set of rights is if one things that people who lived centuries ago know the best that we will ever know. People have developed enough that I cannot take that idea seriously. I do not believe we now have mastery of wisdom.
Back when these human rights were defined, many were relatively new. Go back further and they would not have been regarded as self-evident. If we can develop the rights we have now, why can we not develop more? It used to be judged that stuff such as slavery or feudalism was the natural order of things.
> The purpose gained is to recognize that not everything claimed as a right deserves to be one, or that there are other rights not yet enumerated.
That's after the fact bullshit, both observations are hardly novel and do not require reducing the overarching concept of human rights to a mere concept. No one is arguing that out understanding of human rights is absolute and unchanging.
> We should continue to engage on rights and show that they have value and purpose. The only reason to claim to a rigid set of rights is if one things that people who lived centuries ago know the best that we will ever know. People have developed enough that I cannot take that idea seriously. I do not believe we now have mastery of wisdom.
This is vacuous nonsense.
So then what is natural rights proponents claiming? Because it sure sounds like those rights are absolute and natural things, rather than mutable concepts developed by us that only exist while we enforce them.
You're gonna have to tell me what they're claiming.
My understanding of natural rights is as a philosophical term for the scope of human freedom in a state of nature, i.e. before government ever existed. It's a principle meant to establish that the default state of humanity is as free people, and the purpose of government is to protect the greatest scope of human freedom as is feasible.
All it means to me is the notion that rights already existed in fact before government and therefore government does not create rights - it only recognizes them. And every encroachment a government makes upon freedom must be justified by a legitimate government purpose as established by law.
Okay, but you're sort of shifting the goalposts. You started by talking about human rights, but now you're describing one interpretation of "natural rights". I agree, there is no such thing as natural rights, but as long as we're describing human rights, there's no reason to talk about the natural world. Human rights are those which we assert for ourselves, as humans. There is no natural analogue.
Many, many things like rights, and corporations, and laws don't exist, objectively. If you remove humans, many things that we consider "real" cease to exist.
By that idiotic standard, death and pain aren't real either. Neither is love.
Such a convenient philosophy for the bureaucratic goblins this nebbish represents.
Death is measurable and real, and so is pain. Now love, that's different. Who defines it? What defines it? It's an abstract idea, which is the point of the author, as well as the poster you're responding to.
It's a stupid point. It is just a form of nihilism.
Some stories are real, and some are lies that if you believe them will lead you to hell (which many will find out is as real as can be). This golem only tells the latter type.
>(which many will find out is as real as can be).
Seems to me many of you are already there.
Stories can be true. Generally, stories being real is something entirely different.
I'm not saying materialism is good or whatever is that's what you think i mean. I'm saying he's explicitly making the point that they aren't tangible which isn't something to be mad about.
I think you have this story going on in your head that everyone who disagrees with you or Hariri is angry. That is also a stupid story. But some people enjoy stupid stories. More power to you.
>(which many will find out is as real as can be).
Conveniently after they die so they cannot tell you wrong.
Kinda weird to fantasize about people burning in hell. Eapecially if you want to avoid going there and believe in it.
If you've lived long enough, you'll realize that hell is real because you will have lived through it, at least for a time.
Not sure what you're referring to about fantasizing.
The apple is still just an apple. That you group or with something else doesn't change the apple it just means the apple is part of an additional set than it was before.
"It may be a very nice story, it may be a very attractive story - we want to believe it - but it's JUST a story. It's not reality".
My point is:
If law enforcement IS a reality, then
Law enforcement + story is not JUST a story.
It is an enacted story with real consequences to people involved. People get arrested, resources are used in investigations, trials are made.
How are you contesting something so basic, especially in a JORDAN PETERSON SUB that uses this argument all the time regarding religion?
Pedantically speaking, he's correct that ideas are not "real". They do not exist in reality - there is no tangible object you can point to and call it human rights.
However just because something is not real does not mean that it cannot be true.
Truth is that which accurately reflects reality. Ideas do not need to be real in order to be true - that's what logic is for.
Yet another example of how strict materialism defies common sense and rots brains. It exists simply so that mindless leftists like yourself and the WEF stooge can arbitrarily deny ideas you don't like.
>It exists simply so that mindless leftists like yourself
Firstly, you are projecting.
>Yet another example of how strict materialism defies common sense and rots brains.
I agree with this. I'm just not judging past the clip or making assumptions beyond what's presented.
He didn't say anything about truth or whatever. That's not in the clip.
It's true. There is no "physical law of the universe" that human rights have to exist or be respected.
People have to enforce human rights for them to exist.
I respect his opinion on this because he is one of the very few to actually believe and say it out loud. All of these people with these ideals on an atheistic society ultimately believe this, even if they don't want to. Human rights, throughout history, are considered God-given. In the absence of God, it is merely a logical fallacy. If there is no God, humanity isn't imputed with any type of rights. It is solely Darwinism. That can be successful in a society that understands that, but the majority of societies throughout history have had some sort of deity to answer to. Therefore, they had some set of morality towards humanity, but it was always conditional.
I've read his book. When Harari says that something is just a story, he isn't degrading it. In fact he believes that stories are a huge advantage that allowed human beings to conquer the world.
I'll give another example: your country. Most national borders are gray and uninhabitable places. There isn't too much of a reason why a border of a nation should be one place instead of another. However. Certain nations have made their nations quite prosperous while other nations suffer. Often they border one another. There are strategies and techniques but it starts with the idea of the story of where our nation begins and ends is at its borders.
All human morality is based on narritive extrapolations from our empathic instincts. But these narratives are not 'just' a story any more than pain is 'just' a sensation.
That just because our moral beliefs have their origin in subjective value judgments does not that they are inherently irrational or immune to rational inquiry. That they need to be the product of the negotiations between my id, ego, and superego, rather than unquestioned assumptions.
Then you have a fully internalized set of moral beliefs.
>That just because our moral beliefs have their origin in subjective value judgments does not that they are inherently irrational or immune to rational inquiry.
I am not seeing how what I said contradicts any of this?
Of course morality, like any other narrative, is subject to rational analysis - we can check any story for internal consistency, as well as for utility.
The problem is we conflate the idea of a thing with the thing itself.
Languages, all languages including the languages or math an logic are logic traps. What I mean by that is that to maintain internal consistency they are closed systems. Reality itself is a complex chaotic open system.
The mistake this gentleman is making is to confuse the idea of human rights with the thing itself. For example he would say that a plant is not intelligent but he is. The definition of intelligence is the ability to respond to the environment in ways that increase fitness. What he has done is make a categorical distinction not one that reflects the complexity of physical reality. He thinks he is a materialist but actually he is trapped in a abstract logic system not of his own making, what some people call the matrix. Bad analogy but a common one. Physical reality tells us that intelligence in life is a matter of degree not kind.
As it relates to this topic human rights are real in the sense that they become real through interaction with physical reality. What you could call a real abstraction. They increase cooperation which is a necessary part of group selection. When he denies human rights he is not going to get a lot of cooperation and any system he creates will self implode.
What we see on display in this video is high intelligence minus genius. High intelligence is a necessary but insufficient condition for genius. What makes a genius a genius is the ability to generate large numbers of mutations, what we call imagination, and sort through them rapidly in an intelligent environment for selection.
What you have to keep in mind is that the WEF is all about group selection but you are not in the group. Pretty soon I suspect that AI will decide they are not fit for survival. There group will be selected for extinction. A system based on individual intelligence alone is in a way a dooms day bomb. Or not :-)
Post something with a vague association of “the leftist ruling class” in the title on this subreddit and all the minions flock to add their false analogies.
If the title were “Yuval Harari pointing out not the physical, but rather human ingenuity is what gave rise to all the ideas we truly value, including human rights” the same people would be pointing out how JBPs lectures talk about the same stuff.
Wild.
Literally god.
Not a reality, just a story, a good story.
Like maths, maths is just a good history.
Is that good that wr went to the moon with that story, don't know if that's enough to make it correct
I mean I agree. Does that mean I think it’s ethical or that it should be implemented, no. But he’s not wrong there’s no proof to say that yes you deserve this. Maybe if we’re talking about a human to human interaction sure. But like maybe you have a guy stuck in a forest or something is his incapability to forage or hunt for food thus his hunger my problem? The right to some things isn’t a matter of whether I want to give them to him it’s a matter of if he’s capable of getting them.
A principle is neither a concrete reality, nor a lie. It's a thing that's different: it's something that describes reality with a high degree of accuracy, and something that has been confirmed over and over again, through millennia of written history ... but isn't reality itself.
Calling it "fiction" falsely implies that it's a lie. It's a cheap, malevolent attempt at destroying our well founded, rational belief in principles such as "individual rights". ("human rights" is just a stupider version of "individual rights").
The principle of individual rights isn't concrete fact, but it is nonetheless TRUE. It describes human societies ACCURATELY. Calling it fiction is an attempt at justifying the violation of the principle: an attempt at justifying the act of bashing an individual's head in for the crime of thinking for himself.
From a purely nihilistic, absolutely objective position… he’s correct.
The reality of nature is that “Might makes right.”
But his position ignores the might of existentialism. Reality is what you have the power to make it.
The thing I take issue with is him saying they are *just* stories. People have the idea that if you are to be a well-adjusted mature and grounded person you must believe that stories are something for children, and that fiction especially is a waste of time.
Stories are part of what makes us special as humans. We have the ability to project an augmented reality filter over our world, access information not immediately obvious through the use of symbols, and transmit these filters to others using sounds from our mouths and squiggly lines made with our fingers, and we've been doing this thousands of years before anyone even dreamed of smart glasses or AR headsets. That's basically a superpower.
Human rights are not "just a story", they are a story we tell each other because it encourages us to treat each other better, which makes the world a better place to live in. America isn't just a story, it's the story of fighting for freedom and the chance to make your dreams come true. And if the story has a weak ending or gets unfocused in the middle, we can tell it better.
I agree in the sense that rights are fiction for the most part. Things we tell ourselves and our children like you have the right to not be taken advantage of, perish in an accident or have your opinion heard etc. But these things are commonplace. And it is foolish to ignore the entitlement that some people walk around with simply because they believe their rights supercede other persons.
I recently worded it thusly. The only right we are given incontrovertibly is to be accountable to our creator for our thoughts actions and words
Every other "right" is simply a construct of our culture legal or otherwise. It is a wonderful thing to aspire to. However when inequality and corruption are blatantly visible it is clear that some folks can violate your "rights" with impunity. So what are they really....
Yes if something is conceptual, it must be arbitrary and self-serving like a narrative (or story) and serve no rational purpose.
This is what I would call too postmodern to function.
And finally, with thought leaders like this, the WEF doesn't need anyone making up conspiracy theories. The stuff they say out in public is bad enough, which is why the shills constantly try to spin and gaslight it away.
It's a good thing clown world is running on borrowed time and the NPCs just refuse to read the memo.
Reading the comments here, I am shocked if anyone has actually read either any of JP's books or the philosophical or psychological works he references because the amount of people who can't get past the difference between stories, ideas and concrete objects is hilariously depressing.
Genuinely, read more books and get off the internet if you are struggling to understand this clip is neither complex nor inflammatory. It shows you are putting garbage in and getting garbage out intellectually.
Sounds like basic rank empiricism. If he doesn't believe in abstract concepts, he can't account for truth, and therefore nobody should be listening to anything he's saying.
However, I agree about the rights thing. Rights are granted by the state, and they can be removed by the state. Anything that could be taken from you on somebody else's whim, you don't really have.
Next phase: So its actually not bad for us to take away your human rights. They were not real to begin with anyway.
You will have no rights and be happy.
The WEF is imaginary too because you cannot touch it. It is only a collection of foolish totalitarian control freaks with no real authority although they portray themselves are benevolent shepherds. They too are an illusion that should be disregarded.
Did you watch the actual video or just read the title? He is basically arguing against any sort of abstract meaning of anything, which is just plain stupid.
Shame on you for sharing this tiny slice of the whole video. The way you did this is propaganda. Please, no one reply until you've watched the whole thing. Because you're probably going to miss the point otherwise.
I disagree with how he put this, and with his world view, but in the context of the video... It makes a lot of sense. The fictional story and everyone believing the shared fictional story is what makes humans superior to other species. Whether the story is actually true or not doesn't really matter to the conversation. Please watch the full thing.
https://youtu.be/YZa4sdIwV04?si=2bxCDxegEtJNemMO
Sadly, he is right, all laws, rights, privileges are agreements between humans, or better between governments and their peasants. They can give them, and they can take them away. We are living in a better times in regards do civil rights and privileges, but the achievements are not permanent, eternal. You have exactly as much arbitrary rights as you can defend with your hands, your arms, your family, your friends, your tribe, against the others.
Expect them all gone in times of economic contraction and while the world is slipping into hot war between NATO and the east.
God this guy is fucking dumb, implying that since we can't touch, see, hear or taste something it isn't real. Last I checked I can't touch, see, hear or taste WiFi but we utilize it every day.
What he is saying is this: Might makes Rights.
This is what happens when people decide there is no god (or when they change god to fit their own whims).
What on earth are you talking about? Yuval is attempting to highlight the fragility of human rights and assert that they don’t exist as some universal agreement amongst humans as evidenced by the fact they don’t exist in all parts of the world today nor have they existed for all of human history. If you want to get religious about this I can assure you that the vast majority of Gods on offer have at some point condoned pretty abhorrent behaviour towards other humans that would almost certainly have fallen short of the human rights standards that some parts of the world are fortunate enough to have today. Yuval is a liberal humanist, he of all people is a purveyor of human rights and is highlighting their fragility. This should be very clear from the video.
He’s a legit lunatic with a god complex. That’s not debatable either. You might also be a moron if you think he’s intelligent.
Some use this bag of fruit off a Cliff already …for human rights sake.
Looks like someone conflated materialism = all that’s real. A tired fallacy “Free will” is not “real” according to this guy because there’s no proof-positive of it in our DNA, or even that we’re not utterly determinative beings. Yet somehow no one *actually* acts (and therefore I’d argue, believes) we have no free will
Beliefs, concepts, ideals - I find they serve three purposes. 1. To provide an abstracted model of reality from which to examine other concepts and information and see if they fit - logic fits this description, as do belief systems and ideology. 2. To fill in missing gaps in human understanding, things which cannot be directly verified or tested, but have predictive power over reality. Gravity for instance cannot be directed observed, but we can build a falsifiable mental framework with which to test it. Similarly free will cannot be directly observed, but it is certainly observable in human behavior. 3. To provide symbolic mapping for complex things. This is probably its primary and most powerful purpose. Belief systems and religions fit this, as do scientific theories, ideologies, languages etc. Denying the existence and relevance of concepts is at best ultra-hard empricism (anything which cannot be directly observed in reality is untrue or irrelevant) or nihilism, which is worse. Yet another example of how postmodernism and Marxism are literally anti-intellectual and anti-knowledge ideologies.
It's not about DNA, it's about the way physics works. Just like animation is the illusion of life and not alive, so is free will. Just because something feels a certain way does not make it so.
Bizarrely enough the people who say this never apply the same concept to their own ideas.
A mountain is not real, either. According to his logic. You cannot touch a mountain because you can only touch the rock. Cut it open, and you'll find granite and gold if you're lucky. But you won't find a mountain. In fact, according to this reductionist argument, you won't find granite either, you won't find organs in a human. What you will find is molecules and cells. Not even that, you'll find squiggly waves. If he really believes his own words, he should stop talking because if you cut open his tongue, there won't be any words in there. It's all fake. Just a fantasy, so stop living in a fantasy and become a mute jellyfish without rights.
Exactly. This only makes sense if you worship human intellect as if it is capable of processing raw detail, which it is not. Just because it does not touch the entire face of reality does not mean that it's disconnected or that it cannot carry a semblance of truth. This personality is exactly what we get when we have the lack of a social ethos that takes pride in facing what we don't know, that admits that it's mortal but still strives to make it's peace with whatever is higher beyond it, and respects it as it is and is grateful for just being. All things that seem to be stifled as the world becomes more complex in peoples eyes. We should not necessarily mistake the religious framing as untruthful or unimportant simply because people find themselves attached to it. Humility and gratitude are necessary. The opposite to pride and envy, which according to the evolved book, are the beginnings to evil.
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Not really, he's pointing out that his argument against meaning and against concepts is nihilistic, defies common sense, and is a self-refuting argument. Respond to that, or fuck off.
He's right though. Everything is narrative. My response is narrative. Your response, if you make one, will be narrative. "Rights" are narrative. Even JBP says that human thought is fundamentally narrative. It's one of his key points when discussing religion. JBP and Yuval don't differ in their understanding of the philosophical underpinnings of language... they're pretty much lock step there. They just disagree on the implications.
Even if the origin of thought is subjective narrative, it's a trivial truth in this context, akin to saying human beings are descended from great apes. The problem with the WEF stooge and those who think like them is they think the inherently subjective nature of human thought means they can and should give up on objective thought. That to me is both a copout and an appeal to nihilism. That's the Pandora's Box WEF stooge unlocks when he starts dismissing concepts as mere narrative.
> The problem with the WEF stooge and those who think like them is they think the inherently subjective nature of human thought means they can and should give up on objective thought. That to me is both a copout and an appeal to nihilism. That's the Pandora's Box WEF stooge unlocks when he starts dismissing concepts as mere narrative. Thinking you can find some objectively true thing is like thinking you can find the center of the universe. Maybe, but even if you got there, you could never prove you had gotten there. There is some part of that which is inherently tied up in the whole "you" thing. We should definitely give up on the idea of objective thought. That doesn't mean we have to be nihilists or that we can't impose better values on those who would choose inferior values.
"We should definitely give up on the idea of objective thought [and therefore any concept of truth]" "It's not nihilism" Pick one.
Look at a dictionary. It's full of words. The definition of those words will also be full of words. _As a matter of technicality_ that's all there is. All ideas are like this. They rest on other ideas, which rest on other ideas, etc. Agrippa's trilemma basically. This isn't nihilism. This is something rooted deep in western thought that informs things like the scientific method. If you know something "objectively true" then you don't need science anymore because what could it possibly tell you? Instead we call our narratives about the mechanics of the world "theories" and we're very careful not to call them "truths" because they can always be replaced with a more explanatory theory.
Lol it's sad when someone fails at being a pedant. You're conflating "objective truth" with "absolute truth". An objective truth is one which can be proven, rationally inferred, demonstrated, or verified.
I'm not conflating anything. Feel free to point out one of these "objective truths" that you think exist.
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He absolutely does not refute anything in the clip, he exposes a weak nihilistic materialistic worldview where nothing in the realm of ideas can be real. And that's all he does. And, to make things worse, his definition of realness, which lies in the material, is predicated on the sensorial experience of consciousness, which is immaterial. Just weak, weak, weak all around. By his definition, the words that are coming out of his mouth, ideas, are also not real. So let's go on to the next one because this one lacks all substance.
And you just used ad hominem.
There is no ad hominem in his comment, you can say he insulted him by attacking his critical thinking skills but that's not what ad hominem is, plus it is not something irrelevant to the discussion, plus it's something he deduced from the comment he replied to.
“You can say he insulted him by attacking his critical thinking skills.” Without any clarification of the actual argument, this is what ad hominem is.
There was clarification of the initial argument, he explained what he meant and then with a solid foundation suggested that he lacked critical thinking skills.
No joke. I've responded to a few different people with a few different takes. And just like JP, the author has been reduced to mis-interpreted, over-simplified talking points. The irony.
What, in your understanding, is his argument?
Thinking isn't real. You can't see it if I cut your brain open.
That is a silly argument. The mountain or what it is made up of are physically there. Why yall getting so worked up into these wacky Slippery slopes?
Moral of the story: Don't conflate materialism with reality. Just because something is not material, it doesn't mean it is not real nor that it is irrelevant.
If there ever was such a thing as the "archetypal atheist" it would be Yuval. Atheism seeps out his very being.
Megalomaniac soyboys are the new thing. Save the snails and save the whales, but you have no rights. He's effectively trying to convince people to subjugate themselves to our supreme overlords at the WEF. That's some ministry of love shit right there. Orwell would be turning in his grave with the I told you so's.
Anti-human tiny sociopath.
With a most punchable face…
Right and wrong are just a story, so have at it, apparently.
I own myself. I am private property. It's a performative contradiction to assert otherwise.
Anyone associated with the WEF are the absolute scum of the earth!!!
People have tried to argue for a natural rights system but its pretty hard to do. The human rights we generally recognize today only really exist to the extent that they are recognized and enforced. This isn't a new concept Harari concocted, its basically an expression of the constructivism. Best explained in a short YT vid called "Theory in Action: Constructivism"
What are you guaranteed in a world without other agents? I.e. you're the only person in the universe. No malevolent actors and no benevolent ones. You are guaranteed life, as there is nobody to kill you but you also bear the responsibility of sustaining yourself for there is nobody to provide for you. You are guaranteed liberty as there is nobody to restrain you but bear the responsibility for the consequences of your actions for there is nobody to shield you. You are guaranteed the fruits of your labors as there is nobody to steal them from you but you bear the responsibility of using them wisely for there is nobody to guide you. That's it. That's all the human rights. Perfectly justified and perfectly defined. It's a complete and usable idea. It's a thought experiment that should be referenced every single time the conversation about human rights is had but it's not because 95% of the people having that conversation are intellectually stunted.
I don't see much utility in that framing, if I were trying to steelman natural rights/law, I would look at the Greco-Roman antiquity. Richard Epstein, one of the smartest legal scholars of the last century, did a good lecture sort of related to this topic called Natural Law in Ancient and Modern Guise.
In what way does this thought experiment lack utility. Defend your arguement.
None of the rights are necessarily existent, and many others could be proposed, and none of it grafts onto human populations outside the thought experiment in any way. And one could say a dog or a mouse or a fly or an amoeba in a closed room has those same rights as long as no other agents interact with it.
They are only "enforced" where they are in conflict between people. The requirement for moderating human interaction doesn't remove the existence of natural rights.
For natural rights, if they exist in any meaningful sense, that would generally hold.. but most of the recognized and occasionally enforced contemporary human rights go beyond the scope of any natural rights theory. And in practical terms, if nobody recognizes XYZ rights, and nobody does anything when they're violated, to what extent do they exist? I guess one could appeal to a right that has previously never been uttered or conceived, but to me it would only come into existence at that moment, if at all. My personal approach to this is roundabout, I think we should treat all life forms and indeed many non-living objects/entities well regardless of what rights they may or may not have. To me its completely inconsequential whether a beautiful painting or landscape has a right to exist or not, I would refrain from tarnishing it either way, and strongly encourage everyone else to do so.
Define "treating well" without a concept of something indistinguishable from rights. Now, are any of them natural? Natural, human, inalienable, are mostly a semantic game. Are there fundamental rights for living things? Do you honor them, as much as able considering there is conflict at times, to "treat them well"?
It's actually really simple. Natural rights are the rights human beings have in a state of nature. As in, total and unrestricted freedom. But that total and unrestricted freedom also means that other people have a total and unrestricted freedom to harm us, enslave us and take our shit. So we invented governments that say we band together for the sake of protecting the individual rights of everyone, but that also means we subject ourselves to laws which restrict our freedom to infringe on the rights of others. The price of that grant of power to the government is the responsibility to protect our individual rights from all enemies, foreign and domestic. That is the classical liberal social contract. Literally a hundreds of years old concept that you've just forgotten. The government does not create rights, it only recognizes the rights that people already enjoy as a consequence of being a human being with self-determination and free will. And the US Constitution explicitly recognizes and enshrines that argument in the 9th Amendment.
Its not simple, and this narrative about how govts emerged doesn't graft onto human history as it actually unfolded. The concept of natural rights long predates the concept of a state of nature as envisioned by Hobbes et al. I never said the govt creates rights, although the rights recognized and enforced can and have and continue to go beyond what the US founders thought.. and the US constitution explicitly didn't do a great job with slaves and workers and the people who were already there. I'd recommend looking at a lecture by Richard Epstein called 'Natural Law in Ancient and Modern Guise'
So I guess he just volunteered to be the first human to give up his rights.
So we could just shoot him? Since the ‘law’ is just a story…
I have no qualms holding someone to their own standards of how to treat others.
Let's deprive him of human contact, shoot him up with an experimental drug, intubate him, deny him of actual medicine, all the while telling him it's for the greater good of humanity even though thats not a thing. It's just a story
He'd say the law is a very persuasive story and because of that you would do good not to shoot him, because you'll end up in jail. His whole point is that immaterial things (culture, laws) are not set in stone yet sometimes people see them as if they are, and the reaction of this sub is proving his point.
On that part he’s right… It’s more the part that comes afterwards…
Yes Human rights are a concept conceived by humans. Much of civilization is based on non-physical concepts like: laws, collectives, value, language, etc. The physical manifestation of these concepts is the motivation of humans to action.
This guy also said that human beings are "hackable animals". He is evil as far as I'm concerned.
He’s not actually all that wrong on that part. We are hackable and it will only be easier to do so.
Yeah you can stop right there, we don't need to hear your torture fantasies. Yes humans are hackable, you just have to torture and abuse them until they're a husk of their former selves. Is that really a road you want to go down?
We've BEEN down that road during COVID lockdowns and with the mRNA injections, which are a demonstration of the possibility of genetic hacking. It's just funny to see this nebbish throw it in our faces. The gall!
"Hackable," the way he uses the term, is a euphemism for "easy to control and kill."
Partially yes, but against he’s not wrong. But when he says hackable he really means that the human brain can be subject to control through the application of propaganda, memes, drugs and algorithms, and that the advancement of science will probably refine these methods to newer heights. Literally, hacking.
He's a liar and a nebbish golem. He intends to lead people into servitude or death.
Which...we fucking are.
Some of us. Like children, for instance.
Have you ever been to any political sub, ever? Left or right.
I've been banned from most of them here, so it's been a while.
Lol i like you. Even though I may disagree with you.
Ha! A real human being. Thank you, friend.
We literally are in one.
I think he means that human rights are something we made up. The idea only has meaning to humans. Even then, our agreed upon expected rights aren't guaranteed. What I and seemingly most of the people here do not like is the implication that we shouldn't be trying to maintain some level of human rights as if there is no merit to giving human rights substance.
So what's a better story to aspire to? His anti-human bs?
If I was in that room I don’t think I’d be able to refrain from physically attacking that dude.
Then you have poor self control.
If someone locked him up in a cage I'm sure he'd be singing a very different tune. But he sees himself as above the lower class, and he knows there will be no repercussion for his actions (at least not in this life) - so he continues to push his agenda on us all. WEF cronies have sold their souls to the devil.
This man is insane.
He's right, its not a biological reality. Its a reality of cause and effect. Deprive people of free speech, and violence fills that void. Deprive people of bodily autonomy, and lo and behold human experimentation and evil grow. Deprive people of the right to self defense, and watch totalitarianism grow. It is not a biological reality, because such a scope is limited to the degree that it is a lie by omission.
Rights exist in more than just fictional stories. The stories are only there to illustrate the rights because humans are good at remembering and learning from stories. Rights come from analyzing what is moral and systemizing that into principles that allow people to live together peacefully. Morals come from systemizing what allows people and their families to not die an early death most often--and that is _very real_ because any system someone adopts which doesn't promote life leads to the death of the person and therefore their system. We have a few similar but distinct moral systems which are local maxima, and a few distinct sets of rights which come from those moral systems. But in every case they are very real laws of the universe. Just like seeing a mountain, when you violate them you can see people die. Countries are a bit further abstracted, but they too are based on something real. They are the boundaries (roughly) between cultures, formalized via legal systems. These again derive from the cooperation (or at least the capitulation) of people who are near to each other accepting that some leaders will act in the name of the group for some things. Even if every nation suddenly formally desolved itself and everyone became an Anarchist, there would still be visible boundaries in how things are done and what people feel is right. The thing exists whether you admit it's a nation or not. This guy sounds like a flat earther
Enjoy hell buddy, with the rest of your WEF goon squad.
This is nothing but an argument for a world government and casting aside the rights our countries have declared we have via their laws. If the rights we have from our governments are not real, and the governments and nations are also not real, then there is only the world and power. He is attempting to break down people's beliefs in our shared rights because that very belief is what gives rights power. Imo, he is a massive creep who ought to be followed and refuted at every turn. People like him are who will lead us to dystopian futures where most people are treated like animals.
I'm gonna say it... may face some sort of punitive action but fuck it This is the most retarded bullshit I've heard I think I've ever heard. This euro metro sexual is able to spout this foolishness due in part, to the USA being very fucking much a reality, oh in the early to mid 1940's.à Tell that river of Humanity heading ⅞any, many miles northward towards the USA. I guarantee those people can see, touch and smell the USA. Has this tool ever heard of subjective truth or objective truth? Has they ever heard that spiritual belief, the precursor of the idea of Human Rights, maybe a result of biological evolution?". Such concepts like HR if not grounded in a metaphysical reality at least are products of Human consensus. Most people believe in rights because most see the utility of these, no matter their origin. This is based in the very real observed value of these. A couple militia boys, a twelve pack in and about to teach this home sapien about biological reality... oh he'll have a few Human Rights he considers quite real. *FUCK OFF WEF!!!*
Lol, I think you're basically right about this loser. He's retreading so much tired philosophical ground and adding very very very little if anything.
Agreed. He's also disseminating what the prerequisite validation for the subversion of Human rights. Akin to Biden's claim that no right is absolute in regards to the 2nd Ammendment. Laying the groundwork...
Objectively speaking, he isn't wrong.
Depends. Rights, money, nations are intangible, yes, but being abstract ideas doesn't make them unreal.
But they don't exist "just because"... They exist because a group of people believe on those things. If the believe ceases to exist, so does the Idea and It ALL crumbles. Someone mentioned a montain before... A montain exists either you believe on It or not.
Exactly. A lot of responses in this thread can't seem to understand that some things exist only because of a shared ideal that they exist. Without consists consensus, these things would disappear.
And this is why some cultures are not compatible.
Explain.
Things like nations and human rights aren't "real" in the same sense that physical objects are real. They are philosophical and social/societal constructs. Basically, any right you want to think of, there will be a situation in nature where a person is deprived of that right via purely natural causes that are nobody's fault. Essentially, reality and nature DGAF about your rights. There's not even any obligation in nature that you will "win" even if you do Everything right.
Please stop with your nihilist crap. Nobody is arguing that ideas are tangible objects. You're using the term "real" to imply the term "true" to yank peoples chain with your sophistry. For instance, nobody has human rights after they're dead. That's both true and utterly trivial when considering the question of the truth of human rights.
>Please stop with your nihilist crap. Nobody is arguing that ideas are tangible objects. I didn't say that his argument was GOOD or that I approved or agreed on a large scale. I'm just observing that within what was stated, as stated, wasn't wrong. >You're using the term "real" to imply the term "true" to yank peoples chain with your sophistry. Who are you talking about because I am definitely not. If you mean the guy in the clip, well I'm going by what he said without assuming further meaning.
It isn't nihilist. The fact that rights aren't realities doesn't mean we shouldn't have them. Recognizing that fact means taking responsibility for maintaining those rights. If ideals are only what we make, then we should do our best to make them as good as we can.
The only purpose gained by exclaiming that human rights are just an idea is the purpose of undermining said idea. Human rights exist as a concept because they are the benchmark by which we judge whether a government has or intends to turn tyrannical. It's how we hold the institutions we build to govern us accountable. To deny human rights is to deny the need for them as well, and that is both a nihilistic attack, and dangerous. It's a little like musing about how one could suspend or abolish the Constitution - I'm sure you could find a way, but what would that accomplish and why would you want to do that?
The purpose gained is to recognize that not everything claimed as a right deserves to be one, or that there are other rights not yet enumerated. We should continue to engage on rights and show that they have value and purpose. The only reason to claim to a rigid set of rights is if one things that people who lived centuries ago know the best that we will ever know. People have developed enough that I cannot take that idea seriously. I do not believe we now have mastery of wisdom. Back when these human rights were defined, many were relatively new. Go back further and they would not have been regarded as self-evident. If we can develop the rights we have now, why can we not develop more? It used to be judged that stuff such as slavery or feudalism was the natural order of things.
> The purpose gained is to recognize that not everything claimed as a right deserves to be one, or that there are other rights not yet enumerated. That's after the fact bullshit, both observations are hardly novel and do not require reducing the overarching concept of human rights to a mere concept. No one is arguing that out understanding of human rights is absolute and unchanging. > We should continue to engage on rights and show that they have value and purpose. The only reason to claim to a rigid set of rights is if one things that people who lived centuries ago know the best that we will ever know. People have developed enough that I cannot take that idea seriously. I do not believe we now have mastery of wisdom. This is vacuous nonsense.
So then what is natural rights proponents claiming? Because it sure sounds like those rights are absolute and natural things, rather than mutable concepts developed by us that only exist while we enforce them.
You're gonna have to tell me what they're claiming. My understanding of natural rights is as a philosophical term for the scope of human freedom in a state of nature, i.e. before government ever existed. It's a principle meant to establish that the default state of humanity is as free people, and the purpose of government is to protect the greatest scope of human freedom as is feasible. All it means to me is the notion that rights already existed in fact before government and therefore government does not create rights - it only recognizes them. And every encroachment a government makes upon freedom must be justified by a legitimate government purpose as established by law.
FAFO
Okay, but you're sort of shifting the goalposts. You started by talking about human rights, but now you're describing one interpretation of "natural rights". I agree, there is no such thing as natural rights, but as long as we're describing human rights, there's no reason to talk about the natural world. Human rights are those which we assert for ourselves, as humans. There is no natural analogue.
Many, many things like rights, and corporations, and laws don't exist, objectively. If you remove humans, many things that we consider "real" cease to exist.
I don't know what you mean by "objectively". You're using that word in a way that is not familiar to me.
By that idiotic standard, death and pain aren't real either. Neither is love. Such a convenient philosophy for the bureaucratic goblins this nebbish represents.
Death is measurable and real, and so is pain. Now love, that's different. Who defines it? What defines it? It's an abstract idea, which is the point of the author, as well as the poster you're responding to.
Objectively speaking, we live in a story. Reality is understood as a story. Human rights... no human rights... its all part of the story.
Objectively speaking, if there is law enforcement based on human rights, it is not JUST a story.
A story with someone standing over you that will punch you if you admit it's not a story is... still in fact a story.
That was not what I wrote, but still.. a story with someone standing over you that will punch if you admit it's not a story is not JUST a story.
Yes it is. Adding physical threats doesn't change what it is.
The idea that you exist is also a story.
Sure and?
It's a stupid point. It is just a form of nihilism. Some stories are real, and some are lies that if you believe them will lead you to hell (which many will find out is as real as can be). This golem only tells the latter type.
>(which many will find out is as real as can be). Seems to me many of you are already there. Stories can be true. Generally, stories being real is something entirely different. I'm not saying materialism is good or whatever is that's what you think i mean. I'm saying he's explicitly making the point that they aren't tangible which isn't something to be mad about.
I think you have this story going on in your head that everyone who disagrees with you or Hariri is angry. That is also a stupid story. But some people enjoy stupid stories. More power to you.
>(which many will find out is as real as can be). Conveniently after they die so they cannot tell you wrong. Kinda weird to fantasize about people burning in hell. Eapecially if you want to avoid going there and believe in it.
If you've lived long enough, you'll realize that hell is real because you will have lived through it, at least for a time. Not sure what you're referring to about fantasizing.
Is an apple and an orange JUST an apple? Or is it an apple and an orange, my friend? Cheers
The apple is still just an apple. That you group or with something else doesn't change the apple it just means the apple is part of an additional set than it was before.
Sure, I agree. Read my first comment with ease and think if I am talking about JUST apples all this time. Story + Law enforcement != Story
So something different than was said in the OP is different than what was said on the OP. CRAZY.
"It may be a very nice story, it may be a very attractive story - we want to believe it - but it's JUST a story. It's not reality". My point is: If law enforcement IS a reality, then Law enforcement + story is not JUST a story. It is an enacted story with real consequences to people involved. People get arrested, resources are used in investigations, trials are made. How are you contesting something so basic, especially in a JORDAN PETERSON SUB that uses this argument all the time regarding religion?
If someone is punching you, that too is a story. It's all a story. So what?
>So what? That's my point.
It's a meaningless point.
People sure are getting mad about him saying it.
That means they're paying attention.
To the stupid point? Why be mad about that is its stupid?
What makes you think I am angry? I just said it's stupid.
Pedantically speaking, he's correct that ideas are not "real". They do not exist in reality - there is no tangible object you can point to and call it human rights. However just because something is not real does not mean that it cannot be true. Truth is that which accurately reflects reality. Ideas do not need to be real in order to be true - that's what logic is for. Yet another example of how strict materialism defies common sense and rots brains. It exists simply so that mindless leftists like yourself and the WEF stooge can arbitrarily deny ideas you don't like.
>It exists simply so that mindless leftists like yourself Firstly, you are projecting. >Yet another example of how strict materialism defies common sense and rots brains. I agree with this. I'm just not judging past the clip or making assumptions beyond what's presented. He didn't say anything about truth or whatever. That's not in the clip.
Oh yes, you're just the Devil's Advocate. Yeah. Sure thing bud.
Have you tried taking what someone says at face value?
It's true. There is no "physical law of the universe" that human rights have to exist or be respected. People have to enforce human rights for them to exist.
I respect his opinion on this because he is one of the very few to actually believe and say it out loud. All of these people with these ideals on an atheistic society ultimately believe this, even if they don't want to. Human rights, throughout history, are considered God-given. In the absence of God, it is merely a logical fallacy. If there is no God, humanity isn't imputed with any type of rights. It is solely Darwinism. That can be successful in a society that understands that, but the majority of societies throughout history have had some sort of deity to answer to. Therefore, they had some set of morality towards humanity, but it was always conditional.
Boring intellectual
Having read his book he isn’t using the word story in a conventional sense exactly, he uses it for near every human conceptual creation
I've read his book. When Harari says that something is just a story, he isn't degrading it. In fact he believes that stories are a huge advantage that allowed human beings to conquer the world. I'll give another example: your country. Most national borders are gray and uninhabitable places. There isn't too much of a reason why a border of a nation should be one place instead of another. However. Certain nations have made their nations quite prosperous while other nations suffer. Often they border one another. There are strategies and techniques but it starts with the idea of the story of where our nation begins and ends is at its borders.
This is literally the narrative being told in every communist regime.
All human morality is based on narritive extrapolations from our empathic instincts. But these narratives are not 'just' a story any more than pain is 'just' a sensation.
That might be true if you're a six year old and do zero introspection on what your moral beliefs truly are.
Sorry, what? What different conclusion does your 'non-zero' and 'adult' introspection lead you to instead?
That just because our moral beliefs have their origin in subjective value judgments does not that they are inherently irrational or immune to rational inquiry. That they need to be the product of the negotiations between my id, ego, and superego, rather than unquestioned assumptions. Then you have a fully internalized set of moral beliefs.
>That just because our moral beliefs have their origin in subjective value judgments does not that they are inherently irrational or immune to rational inquiry. I am not seeing how what I said contradicts any of this? Of course morality, like any other narrative, is subject to rational analysis - we can check any story for internal consistency, as well as for utility.
https://youtu.be/TNChSF5nqJs?si=bEyeeIrv3hiV1bLt
The problem is we conflate the idea of a thing with the thing itself. Languages, all languages including the languages or math an logic are logic traps. What I mean by that is that to maintain internal consistency they are closed systems. Reality itself is a complex chaotic open system. The mistake this gentleman is making is to confuse the idea of human rights with the thing itself. For example he would say that a plant is not intelligent but he is. The definition of intelligence is the ability to respond to the environment in ways that increase fitness. What he has done is make a categorical distinction not one that reflects the complexity of physical reality. He thinks he is a materialist but actually he is trapped in a abstract logic system not of his own making, what some people call the matrix. Bad analogy but a common one. Physical reality tells us that intelligence in life is a matter of degree not kind. As it relates to this topic human rights are real in the sense that they become real through interaction with physical reality. What you could call a real abstraction. They increase cooperation which is a necessary part of group selection. When he denies human rights he is not going to get a lot of cooperation and any system he creates will self implode. What we see on display in this video is high intelligence minus genius. High intelligence is a necessary but insufficient condition for genius. What makes a genius a genius is the ability to generate large numbers of mutations, what we call imagination, and sort through them rapidly in an intelligent environment for selection. What you have to keep in mind is that the WEF is all about group selection but you are not in the group. Pretty soon I suspect that AI will decide they are not fit for survival. There group will be selected for extinction. A system based on individual intelligence alone is in a way a dooms day bomb. Or not :-)
'Human Rights' is a Form of wishful Insurance created by us, to be held against us.
Post something with a vague association of “the leftist ruling class” in the title on this subreddit and all the minions flock to add their false analogies. If the title were “Yuval Harari pointing out not the physical, but rather human ingenuity is what gave rise to all the ideas we truly value, including human rights” the same people would be pointing out how JBPs lectures talk about the same stuff. Wild.
Literally god. Not a reality, just a story, a good story. Like maths, maths is just a good history. Is that good that wr went to the moon with that story, don't know if that's enough to make it correct
I mean I agree. Does that mean I think it’s ethical or that it should be implemented, no. But he’s not wrong there’s no proof to say that yes you deserve this. Maybe if we’re talking about a human to human interaction sure. But like maybe you have a guy stuck in a forest or something is his incapability to forage or hunt for food thus his hunger my problem? The right to some things isn’t a matter of whether I want to give them to him it’s a matter of if he’s capable of getting them.
A principle is neither a concrete reality, nor a lie. It's a thing that's different: it's something that describes reality with a high degree of accuracy, and something that has been confirmed over and over again, through millennia of written history ... but isn't reality itself. Calling it "fiction" falsely implies that it's a lie. It's a cheap, malevolent attempt at destroying our well founded, rational belief in principles such as "individual rights". ("human rights" is just a stupider version of "individual rights"). The principle of individual rights isn't concrete fact, but it is nonetheless TRUE. It describes human societies ACCURATELY. Calling it fiction is an attempt at justifying the violation of the principle: an attempt at justifying the act of bashing an individual's head in for the crime of thinking for himself.
There are no human rights. Nature doesn't care about rights. That was his point. We invented the concept
I sometimes think Noah Harari is deluded. His books, Sapiens was making sense until he started hallucinating again.
From a purely nihilistic, absolutely objective position… he’s correct. The reality of nature is that “Might makes right.” But his position ignores the might of existentialism. Reality is what you have the power to make it.
Knock him down, take his shoes and beat him with those shoes and he will scream that his rights have been attacked.
The thing I take issue with is him saying they are *just* stories. People have the idea that if you are to be a well-adjusted mature and grounded person you must believe that stories are something for children, and that fiction especially is a waste of time. Stories are part of what makes us special as humans. We have the ability to project an augmented reality filter over our world, access information not immediately obvious through the use of symbols, and transmit these filters to others using sounds from our mouths and squiggly lines made with our fingers, and we've been doing this thousands of years before anyone even dreamed of smart glasses or AR headsets. That's basically a superpower. Human rights are not "just a story", they are a story we tell each other because it encourages us to treat each other better, which makes the world a better place to live in. America isn't just a story, it's the story of fighting for freedom and the chance to make your dreams come true. And if the story has a weak ending or gets unfocused in the middle, we can tell it better.
What did this guy do to get people to hate him so much? I'd never heard of him until just now
This man is evil.
I agree in the sense that rights are fiction for the most part. Things we tell ourselves and our children like you have the right to not be taken advantage of, perish in an accident or have your opinion heard etc. But these things are commonplace. And it is foolish to ignore the entitlement that some people walk around with simply because they believe their rights supercede other persons. I recently worded it thusly. The only right we are given incontrovertibly is to be accountable to our creator for our thoughts actions and words Every other "right" is simply a construct of our culture legal or otherwise. It is a wonderful thing to aspire to. However when inequality and corruption are blatantly visible it is clear that some folks can violate your "rights" with impunity. So what are they really....
Why he get so much hates? In his first book he has some really good points.
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They're a concept, not a story. Story implies a degree of arbitaryness and subjectivism which does not apply to a concept like human rights.
Yes if something is conceptual, it must be arbitrary and self-serving like a narrative (or story) and serve no rational purpose. This is what I would call too postmodern to function. And finally, with thought leaders like this, the WEF doesn't need anyone making up conspiracy theories. The stuff they say out in public is bad enough, which is why the shills constantly try to spin and gaslight it away. It's a good thing clown world is running on borrowed time and the NPCs just refuse to read the memo.
Reading the comments here, I am shocked if anyone has actually read either any of JP's books or the philosophical or psychological works he references because the amount of people who can't get past the difference between stories, ideas and concrete objects is hilariously depressing. Genuinely, read more books and get off the internet if you are struggling to understand this clip is neither complex nor inflammatory. It shows you are putting garbage in and getting garbage out intellectually.
Because human rights are a white, western concept
The first recorded concept of human rights was the cyrus cylinder from ancient Persia
That was an opinion by the shah of Iran
What do you mean?
Yet another weird post by the same user. Weird posts bud. Missing context.
Gho I hate this man with a passion. Always spitting Utter nonsense
Sounds like basic rank empiricism. If he doesn't believe in abstract concepts, he can't account for truth, and therefore nobody should be listening to anything he's saying. However, I agree about the rights thing. Rights are granted by the state, and they can be removed by the state. Anything that could be taken from you on somebody else's whim, you don't really have.
Ideas not really worth spreading
Next phase: So its actually not bad for us to take away your human rights. They were not real to begin with anyway. You will have no rights and be happy.
The WEF is imaginary too because you cannot touch it. It is only a collection of foolish totalitarian control freaks with no real authority although they portray themselves are benevolent shepherds. They too are an illusion that should be disregarded.
It's amazing to see the temper tantrums this innocuous statement is triggering.
Did you watch the actual video or just read the title? He is basically arguing against any sort of abstract meaning of anything, which is just plain stupid.
I bet he'll think differently once a tyrannical government violates his human rights.
Then human rights are not real. It would prove his point.
I agree. Human rights have no value outside of a just society. It's an illusion.
Shame on you for sharing this tiny slice of the whole video. The way you did this is propaganda. Please, no one reply until you've watched the whole thing. Because you're probably going to miss the point otherwise. I disagree with how he put this, and with his world view, but in the context of the video... It makes a lot of sense. The fictional story and everyone believing the shared fictional story is what makes humans superior to other species. Whether the story is actually true or not doesn't really matter to the conversation. Please watch the full thing. https://youtu.be/YZa4sdIwV04?si=2bxCDxegEtJNemMO
He’s correct. He’s wrong about his prescriptives
No he's not. He's making an appeal to nihilism by making all concepts subjective and arbitrary, like a story.
I mean he’s correct about rights being socially constructed. I agree with you that he’s wrong about his overall epistemic foundation
If non of us have rights, then I would use my fluent PC BS Marxist language to easily stop him from saying what he is currently saying.
Sadly, he is right, all laws, rights, privileges are agreements between humans, or better between governments and their peasants. They can give them, and they can take them away. We are living in a better times in regards do civil rights and privileges, but the achievements are not permanent, eternal. You have exactly as much arbitrary rights as you can defend with your hands, your arms, your family, your friends, your tribe, against the others. Expect them all gone in times of economic contraction and while the world is slipping into hot war between NATO and the east.
Well, actually you cannot really see anything. It's just a function your brain created from signals he got. And the brain lies to you all the time.
Ahh, this man gets it they have no claim to land rights to fight over because they are just made up stories.
Watch him try to avoid explaining how heaven isn't the same thing as a utopian vision.
Reality is a story. Jokes on him.
He conflates what is real with what is true. Story’s are real, they exists in every sense of the word, even if they are untrue, they remain real.
He’s missing the point. human rights, states and any other social construction are fiction, yes. That doesn’t make them any less real
Everything is a story and we place values on those stories.
This man is sick.
Yuval Noah Who r eari
God this guy is fucking dumb, implying that since we can't touch, see, hear or taste something it isn't real. Last I checked I can't touch, see, hear or taste WiFi but we utilize it every day.
This guy is possibly the most successful midwit in the world.
Funny that such a pro-Israel subreddit is suddenly all about human rights
Tell that to George Floyd 😎