Some interest are more valid than others

Reasons to agree

1. The desire for financial security is valid, as long as it is not applied in your life in such a way to cause you to disrespect other people's rights.
2. In a just society those who act on valid interest do not commit crimes. The more severe the punishment the less valid the interest. In any society the interest of criminals are not considered valid, when actions resulting from their interest, result in illegal behavior. In these situations, they may be guided by valid interest, however the application of their interest, by perhaps overriding other's interest, results in criminal activity.
3. For the purposes of this website, viewing things on a whole, the desire for great wealth, would be less valid than mere financial security, because the desire for great wealth, more more likely be used as a motivation to break more laws, than mere financial security.
4. All of this is relative, and semantic, but that does not mean we should throw our hands up in the air, and say all motivations are equal. The desire to rape and kill is not seen as a valid in any society, and if we are going to ever make progress in determining the validity of any position, we have to make progress in determining the reasons, and boundaries that start to make valid interest less valid.

We should only participate in discussion groups with members with diverse opinions.

Reasons to agree

1. If everybody thinks the same way, someone isn't thinking.

Reasons to disagree

1. The typical debate forum is not set up in such a format that it makes examining truth claims to be a very productive experience.
2. When you get to forums in which real debate is taking place, people get caught up in all the tedious personal attacks, accusations, oversimplification, and false logic that is typical of modern debate. It is a waste of time just hanging out with people that you already agree with, but it can often be a greater waste of time to try to participate in a meaningful debate in the typical online forum.

Score:

# of reasons to agree: 1

# of reasons to disagree: -2

# of reasons to agree with reasons to agree: 0

# of reasons to disagree with reasons to agree: 0

Total Idea Score: -1

Don't like the score? It is easy to change the score. Just post a reason to agree or disagree with the overall idea, or any of the reasons and the score will change.

We should focus on interest not positions

Reasons to agree

1. Focusing on interest allows both sides to get what what they really want.

Database of ideas

We should tag every belief with a code. Then we tag other beliefs as reasons to agree or disagree.



Perhaps each belief would get a numeric code in a database, such as 101. Reasons to agree would be number sequentially, like 101a1, 101a2, etc. Reasons to disagree would be labeled 101d1, 101d2, etc.



Reasons to agree with 101a1 would be labeled 101a1a1, and so on.



This way the database could, with some very simple code count the number of reasons to agree or disagree with each idea.



I am looking for help developing an SQL and PHP database. It would create a post for each conclusion, and post reasons to agree and disagree in separate columns.



Here is a Google Code project I created for this:



http://code.google.com/p/ideastockexchange/



Check it out for a better explanation.

No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the sum of his knowledge

Reasons to agree

1. "A concept" is a belief, or conclusion. The "sum of [one's] knowledge" is all the information, statistics, facts, and arguments that we have rolling around in our head. Valid conclusions take into account real data. Invalid conclusions ignore important data. If we want to believe things that are valid we need to take in accurate data, and ensure that our conclusions don't contradict each other.

There is a Lehigh County, Pennsylvania which is suspiciously close to the name Lehi in the Book of Mormon

Reasons to agree

1. 
   

Reasons to disagree

1. There were thousands of towns and cities in America at the time of Joseph Smith. Because some of them have similar names to names in the Book of Mormon doesn't prove much. You would have to do a pretty sophisticated analysis with multiple places in order for it to prove very much statistically.

Score:

# of reasons to agree: 0

# of reasons to disagree: -1

# of reasons to agree with reasons to agree: 0

# of reasons to disagree with reasons to agree: 0

Total Idea Score: -1

Don't like the score? It is easy to change the score. Just post a reason to agree or disagree with the overall idea, or any of the reasons and the score will change.

The names in the Book of Mormon are suspiciously close to the names of Towns around where Joseph Smith grew up

Reasons to agree

1. There is a Lehigh County, Pennsylvania which is suspiciously close to the name Lehi in the Book of Mormon (-1).

Reasons to disagree

1. In order to determine this you would have to sit down with a list of Book of Mormon names, and an accurate list of names around Joseph Smith in his time. Some of the list on Anti-Mormon websites have names of cities that were not even settled yet in Book of Mormon times. So you would have to establish that a neutral party is examining the names, and then you would have to determine the probability that the names in the Book of Mormon were not created from towns surrounding Joseph Smith. Even if you did this, you would only generate a probability that Joseph Smith would have generated those names from actual ancient Nephite Laminite names, and it wouldn't really prove very much, but would have to be taken into consideration with other probabilities that Joseph Smith was inspired...

Score:

# of reasons to agree: 1

# of reasons to disagree: -1

# of reasons to agree with reasons to agree: 0

# of reasons to disagree with reasons to agree: -1

Total Idea Score: -1

Don't like the score? It is easy to change the score. Just post a reason to agree or disagree with the overall idea, or any of the reasons and the score will change.