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  By errorspending

  Jul 22, 2011
  This is by far the most profound book I have ever had the pleasure of reading. The metaphors and explanations are very clear and make this book accessible to anyone with an interest in ethics. There is no obtuse philosophical jargon that so often obscures technical writing. This book is a game changer and a bright North Star for humanity. Everyone knows that murder, rape and theft are wrong, but the methodology that this book sets forth for examining moral propositions obliterates some of the most popular cultural values. A must read!!!!
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  By Colleen Cowgill

  Aug 18, 2009
  "A revolutionary ethical theory" Never before has such a logically consistent and empirically verifiable ethical theory been put forth. This book undertakes the task of applying the basic procedure of the scientific method to the question of ethics and the results are astounding and almost entirely indisputable. I'm not exaggerating at all when I say that this is one of the most important books ever written, and I can only hope for humanity that it reaches a good number of people someday.
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  By Rod Peterson

  Feb 2, 2009
  "A letter to the future." It's late November, 2007. I've been wanting to write a review on Stefan Molyneux's Universally Preferable Behaviour: A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics for several weeks, but I've been stuck. How do I write a review -- pass judgment -- on something which will have a larger impact on the world than all of my words and deeds combined? The only thing I can do to make myself comfortable with the concept is to write this not as a review, but as a letter to the inhabitants of the future. Perhaps from your perspective, my praise won't sound as hyperbolic as it does to my ears in the present. You already know the content of the book. You don't need me to summarize it for you, as its substance has been mixed with the concrete which forms the solid foundations of your society. Instead, I'll tell you about my experience of the book in my own time. I envy you, inhabitant of the future. You've grown up in a world guided by consistent principles and sound moral... More > philosophy. The gods and governments which inhabit my world have passed into the history books, where they can cause you no real harm. Your parents did not force you to attend a church, and so you did not learn to distrust your senses. You were not educated by the state, and so your mind was not systematically demolished. You were not fed with a diet of false knowledge and twisted, corrupt morality, to be later exploited in your resulting weakness. I imagine your world, and I weep with joy. And with sadness, knowing that I won't experience it myself. You may wonder if contemporaries of Mr. Molyneux knew what it was that they held when they read their first-edition copies of UPB. I'm not sure I can. I was amazed at his insight and entertained by his wit. I laughed as I read it. I laughed in amusement. I laughed in exultation. I laughed in defiance of the addled past and its sophist masters. And when I had finished reading it, the echoes of my laughter subsiding, I found that I was numb. Universally Preferable Behavior had taken away my last excuse for failure to live and act with integrity. I could no longer fall back on the story that I didn't know right from wrong. That I wasn't given the proper instruction by those who claimed the right to teach me. It's not a weight I was expecting to carry just yet -- if ever. I've been following along with Mr. Molyneux in his early years as a philosopher. I've had the pleasure of learning from him, speaking with him, and (perhaps most satisfyingly) supporting him in his work. The quality of my life has increased in ways I could never have imagined before this experience. I'm intellectually and emotionally stronger than I've ever been since my earliest days as an unspoiled child. And yet, I'm utterly humbled by the thought of applying the framework of UPB to my life. But you are reading this, and the fact that you are must mean that people of my generation have proven capable of hefting this weight. We must have braced against each other when the load was too great to carry individually. We must have stopped to pick each other up when we fell toward our old habits of false morality. We must have spurred each other on with optimistic musings about the world in which you live. We must have loved that world enough to carry this responsibility forward to the next generation, so that they could add their strength to ours. And we must have known, somewhere deep within us, what it was that we were holding when we first read that book. I hope that you love and cherish your world as much as I do.< Less
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  By Greg Gauthier

  Aug 9, 2008
  "Ethics. If only we'd gotten them right the first time..." Moral philosophers consider the question "Why Be Good?" to be one of the central problems of ethics. Stefan Molyneux himself has expressed this tangentially as one motivation for writing the UPB book.But, it has occurred to me recently, that this is the wrong question - and I think it may be this fundamental difference between UPB and other moral arguments that makes Universally Preferable Behavior superior to them. UPB does not attempt to answer this question. It simply acknowledges that we all, as a matter of observable fact, want to "be good". That is UPB's basic axiom.Some will contest that all mister Molyneux has done is to simply refuse to answer the question. But, I would argue that no one really wants or needs an answer to that question. Even in the most backwater, barbaric, nomadic cultures you can think of, the people in those cultures believed that what they were doing was *good. They... More > desired to be good. Even if that meant lopping 500 heads to appease a sun god, or burning infidels at the stake, or torturing pagans on the rack. But the truth is, as this book shows, that they were all corrupted into believing that what they were doing was the good. But they needed little if no explanation at all, for why they wanted to do what was good. They just did it.So, the REAL problem is not "why should I be good?", but rather, "Why should I believe your definition of the good?" - And THAT is the problem UPB solves.It is the only problem that really needed to be solved, at a fundamental level. Right action is what we've always desired, as a species. But knowledge of right action has been so obscured for centuries that acting coherently on our desire to do good has been next to impossible. UPB does not - and cannot - give you the desire to act on the good, but it can - and does - give you a means to discover what it is.THAT is why this stuff is so scary to people. THAT is why UPB is such a "dangerous" idea: It tells us all that we've lived a lie for eons, in order to dull the unsatisfied pang of that desire to do good - and that, all this time we believed we were doing good, we were in fact, doing the opposite.THAT is why violence escalates, and evil accumulates. The unsatisfied desire keeps building and building, and our appetite keeps expanding, in an attempt to satisfy the desire. But, because we think the opposite of good is actual good, we only exacerbate the pangs; enhance the desire; excellerate the craving to satisfy that desire.THAT is why violence-centered societies must ALWAYS fail - and precisely why governments must ALWAYS collapse, in the end.< Less
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  By Mini American Flags

  Aug 1, 2008
  "Universally Preferable Behavior: Mini-Review" I’ve been busy reading up on the arguments for/against government since for about 3-4 months. I picked up a book (Universally Preferable Behavior) by Stefan Molyneux that I think solidifies the argument against the need for the state and has a much more solid argument for man-based ethics than I have read before. Since this is a relatively new subject to me (compared to Objectivism) I’m going to take my time before I lay out my argument here. For now, if you are interested reading about this new argument for objective, rational, man-based ethics (that I think is more cohesive and logical than Objectivism) pick up this book. Here’s an introduction by the author himself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8nB2FjS8AQ Mr. Molyneux has a good background in philosophy and is an admirer of Ayn Rand. He found some flaws in her works that he thought needed to be corrected, and so far I agree with his arguments. My admiration for him... More > started when I began watching his Youtube videos about a year ago. Since then he (and many others like him) have convinced me that state only hinders individual freedom, no matter what way you pitch it. I am now on my second time reading this book, and can't find any logical inconsistencies anywhere. I never thought I'd say it, but I am convinced that men do not need governments to rule them. In fact, I think it is morally wrong that the state exists. "But what about the roads!?", you ask? Visit freedomainradio.com to find every answer you need. It will make that much more sense after you have come to the conclusion that the state is morally wrong.< Less
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