Haha, this survey was interesting! Men VS Women

[integral]

4 hours ago, LastThursday said:

A man pretending to be blind telling off someone for not being honest. That's hilarious! Tell me honestly, did it make you feel good the guy was caught out?

Honestly it made me feel bad. Not sure the root of it. 

He doesn't know any better... kind of situation. 

But i could recontextualize/change perspective a million ways to get your experience. Alllllll makes sense. 

Edited April 7, 2021 by integral

[BornToBoil]

@integral @LastThursday @Preety_India can someone explain to me why what he did was bad?

Obviously it is a social experiment/prank sort of video so you can't expect some sort of higher spiritual truths from it. He didn't even create any drama after confronting those people who took money. No insult, no threats, just saying "please be honest next time". 

There are much more trashy videos of the similar genre on youtube.

Also, there are degrees of dishonesty. Yes, he was pretending to be blind, which might be considered as a bad thing. But his behaviour didn't harm anyone and I think everyone would agree that it's not in the same league with stealing money from a blind person. 

Imo, the moral here was that they would steal money from a real blind person as well.

How else are you going to conduct such an experiment? Find an actual blind person and put him in potentially dangerous situation?

I would love to hear another side of an argument.

[LastThursday]

@BornToBoil here's my chain of reasoning that made me post my comment:

• This is entertainment.
• The entertainment is based on deception.
• You are a voyeur that's in on the deception. You are complicit in the deception and you get a kick out of it - that's the entertainment value of it.
• Within the first few seconds you already know that some people will con the deceiver. You get a kick out of being outraged when someone steals the money. You are playing at being morally superior, you would never do that eh?
• When the deceiver (blind man) catches out the thief you get another kick out of it, justice has been served. More entertainment.
• But actually, the thief himself was deceived, the person playing the blind man was being deceitful, and you yourself were complicit in all of it. All for your own entertainment.
• I'm just as bad for pointing it all out and trying to make you feel bad.

 

 

Edited April 7, 2021 by LastThursday

[BornToBoil]

@LastThursday @LastThursday yes, that's completely true. As a viewer that's 100% what's happening.

But I meant your comment: "A man pretending to be blind telling off someone for not being honest."

I just don't see much of an issue here. Him pretending to be blind doesn't harm anyone so it definjtely shouldn't be equated to stealing imo. And telling a thief to be honest is not that big of a punishment as well.

Edited April 7, 2021 by BornToBoil

[BornToBoil]

@LastThursday @LastThursday I actually posted it without reading your edit. 

Again, yes you are right about the viewer getting a kick from being morally superior. But I don't agree with how you compare a thief being decieved to stealing from a blind person.

And no, I don't think any normal person could to steal from a blind person like that. 

[integral]

4 minutes ago, BornToBoil said:

And no, I don't think any normal person could to steal from a blind person like that. 

Does weren't people? lmao

[LastThursday]

@BornToBoil A dishonest man is telling another dishonest man not to be dishonest. Need I say more?

 

[BornToBoil]

@integral oh, come on. You know what I meant. Don't get so literal just for the sake of argument.

Tell me, would you have enough guts to steal 50 bucks from a blind man? 

@LastThursday What I am trying to say is that there are degrees of dishonesty. By that logic a judge who lied to his kids about Santa Claus has no right to judge a politician who stole millions of dollars.

[LastThursday]

I apologise to @Preety_India for sabotaging a thread made in good humour.

@BornToBoil the problem with your reasoning is, who gets to decide what degree of dishonesty is acceptible? Who sets up these "degrees"? You? Society? If you wanted to perpetuate deception, the first thing you would say is "my deception wasn't as bad as his deception" or "my deception doesn't hurt anyone". You're right even a judge is not immune from deception. Even a judge is a hypochrite.

[BornToBoil]

@LastThursday wow, yeah, that actually makes sense now. But still it only works if we are talking about philosophy and spirituality. But in practice our society needs those arbitrary degrees to function properly.

Also, couldn't you make an argument that we were created in that exact way (having an ability to draw nuanced arbitrary distinctions) by universe/god which means that it is what we are supposed to be doing? For example to advance our society which would increase our levels of consciousness which would ultimately make us more loving and in tune with higher intelligence?

[BornToBoil]

@Preety_India I hope you don't mind it, haha

 

I am not really arguing, just being curious (or at least doing my best not to).

[LastThursday]

Drawing nuanced arbitrary distinctions is relativity in action. Even outside of philosophy or spirituality you can't get away from relativity. Whenever someone who supposedly embodies higher consciousness says something absolute like for example: "I decree that the deception of theft is worse than the deception of impersonation", you should immediately question that absolute decree, by saying "WTF?".

Relying on relativity to make everyone higher consciousness is like expecting water to spontaneously go uphill. Spiritually, the only way to advance is to find the absolute, that is to get away from relativity. So employing activities that will increase the chances of finding the absolute, is one way society could advance. Anyway the word "advance" is a very loaded and ambiguous word, it's not at all obvious what it should mean. Again, to advance is relative.

[BornToBoil]

@LastThursday I mean yes, you are right. But I would prefer to live nowadays rather than 2000 years ago, so I would say that those strategies are actually working and it's not the same as expecting water to run uphill.

By advancing society I meant something like decreasing suffering and increasing our capacity for love. But yeah, you could as well say that advancing society means creating as much suffering as possible, lol. The issue with that though is that it makes having a constructive conversation impossible since you could do this trick with every word and term in our language. Meaning of the word "word" is arbitrary.

Also, before I was thinking that those types of videos may be fun, but don't provide much value besides entertainment. I have just realised that it's not really true. I now think that they can be quite useful if done in a conscious way.

There was a similar kind of youtube channel in Russian with two guys who were doing all sorts of interesting social experiments.

For example one guy would pretend that he is beating up another one or pretend to get sick while walking on the street and see if people would do something to help or just ignore it and walk pass them as if it's not their business.

I used to watch it a lot when I was like 10-12. Mostly for entertainment to be honest, but I also believe that it had some positive effect on me because it made me contemplate what is the right thing to do and how I would like to behave if I was in that situation.

Edited April 7, 2021 by BornToBoil

[LastThursday]

18 minutes ago, BornToBoil said:

But I would prefer to live nowadays rather than 2000 years ago

Bias and guesswork. The fact is nobody knows what is was actually like to live 2000 years ago anywhere (barring reincarnation and remembering it which I wouldn't rule out completely).

22 minutes ago, BornToBoil said:

The issue with that though is that it makes having a constructive conversation impossible since you could do this trick with every word and term in our language.

That is exactly true. What does constructive mean anyway? That's the problem with words full stop. Every word is defined in terms of every other word. It's one big relative network. No word is pinned to anything absolute, not even the word absolute.

I'm fairly ambivalent about anything covertly filmed in the street and touted as entertainment. These are real people often being deceived and filmed without consent. If it's a street magician, then perhaps, the intent is transparent. I'm just not so sure about it. If entertainment is the goal then there are better ways to be entertained. I suppose it's just my personal preference.

[BornToBoil]

2 minutes ago, LastThursday said:

I'm fairly ambivalent about anything covertly filmed in the street and touted as entertainment. These are real people often being deceived and filmed without consent. If it's a street magician, then perhaps, the intent is transparent. I'm just not so sure about it. If entertainment is the goal then there are better ways to be entertained. I suppose it's just my personal preference.

Bias and guesswork 

Anyway, this conversation can last forever and even though I really like it, I want to go to sleep already, so lets stop it here.

Thank you for the great discussion.

[LastThursday]

@BornToBoil de nada hombre, it was a pleasure.