...you think this idiotic and wrong stereotype will help that situtation?
What, the idiotic stereotype of spammers? There's nothing stereotypically Muslim in the post at all!
Observe:
Are Muslims promised virgins in the afterlife? Yes.
Do Muslims worship Allah? Yes.
Do Muslims advocate the use of burkas? Yes.
Are Muslims typically underweight? Actually, I don't know. But it can't be much of a stereotype if it's not widely known, can it? Maybe it's just a misconception.
Now, the post is still offensive for other reasons, but you were probably too busy stereotyping Slashdotters as "arrogant" to notice:)
Not necessarily. When the army ships things in bulk, they really do mean bulk. At the strategic/logistical level, targetting nutrient patches would present the same difficulties as targetting MREs. At the tactical level, each soldier could carry a week's worth of the suckers without even noticing--kinda hard to create a shortage when each enemy troop has a surplus in their pockets...
I imagine these things are more like mineral/vitamin supplements. They'll streamline the process of meeting the soldiers' trace element needs. They'll also (once perfected) allow the army to produce much simpler main meals, since they won't need to go out of their way to include things like vegetables and other hard-to-preserve or difficult-to-obtain menu items.
Think about it: instead of having to put together a complete breakfast for your troops, you can just feed them a generic mass of proteins and sugars, and slap a patch on them to take care of the vitamin and mineral requirements. Much faster, cheaper, and field-portable.
My Eng 256 (creative writing) class was 50% fanfic, mostly of anime, and most of it being utter crap.
If that's the kind of writing we're producing in college classes, then I see no reason to preserve the earth for for anybody who's in school right now, let alone future generations who will undoubtedly be even more repulsive.
autotelic: having a purpose in and not apart from itself
...Mr. Lessig's day job at Stanford is creating the very IP parasites he rails on about.
Mr. Lessig's day job: Teaching "Constitutional Law" and "Law and Virtual Worlds" courses at Stanford University.
What we see here is a relationship between a law professor, the law, the Constitution, and virtual worlds. Since the law, the Constitution, and virtual worlds all came into existence, and are perpetuated, independently of Mr. Lessig, it seems clear that the purpose of Mr. Lessig as a law professor can only be understood in terms of its relationship to these things, and that he is not autotelic at all.
I could argue that perhaps Mr. Lessig has created the field of "Law and Virtual Worlds" specifically in order to perpetuate his own existence as a law professor, but I'd have to disregard the fact that virtual worlds, the law, and the intersection of the two, exists independently of his own existence as a law professor. Even if Lessig is one of the first to enter this field, we already have a word for that: pioneer. And when the pioneer has created the field which he then enters, we often use the term "genius". If Lessig is truly autotelic (which seems unlikely), then he is in good company, along with Jonas Salk, Neils Bohr, and Alan Turing, among others.
And why shouldn't he teach law? Study of the law does not make one an IP parasite. Teaching the law does not make one a greedy hypocrite. Teaching the law during the week, and applying one's knowledge of the law on weekends to promote justice and uphold fair play seems rather more laudable than the pursuits of the stereotypical lawyer.
Perhaps the Troll would care to offer some counter-examples that distinguish Mr. Lessig as a greedy hypocrite, rather than the admirable figure the documented evidence seems to present?
"Most"? What kind of assertion is that? Real numbers, and sources, please. At least the original poster actually provided a title, author, and publisher, along with concrete examples of what they liked about the work in question.
What's wrong with saying, "most non-Japanese manga artists and aficionados don't seem to 'get it', so you should probably check into these guys' credentials before you commit yourself to their way of thinking"?
Come to think of it, nobody becomes a manga expert overnight. Everybody's going to start somewhere, and they're always going to start out thinking that the little piece they've just discovered is the whole picture. It's rarely helpful to tell the beginner how stupid they are for not already being a master.
I doubt that you're the only person who ever figured out that manga is a rich and diverse art form. Do you really think that nobody else but you ever noticed that there was more to manga than "big breasts and scantily-clad females"? You may be an expert in western manga manuals (which I also doubt), but you can't tell me you're more of an expert than the people who write and publish books on the subject. Not without showing some samples of your own work or research to back up your claims, anyway. The other guys have written whole books on the subject--what have you ever done for the community?
Have you even read the book in question? How do you know anything about it? What if the authors acknowledge the wide range of manga styles? What if they make it clear that they're only focusing on a particular subgenre? What if they include a well-written forword, that discusses manga in general with insight and care? What if they conclude with a chapter of references to more detailed works, or works in other subgenres, or works by more sophisticated authors, dealing with more sophisticated aspects of manga? What if dropping a few names, and trashing authors and readers you know nothing about, makes you look... what's that word? Oh, right: "like an ass".
My point was that any "evil" act can be viewed as "good" if you look at it from the right angle - umm, no pun intended:o)
No worries--the discussion was getting a little too serious, wasn't it?
The question then, of course, is justifiable to whom?
I'll take the second point first: the question is applicable to the hypothetical "equalist" philosopher, who rejects the idea that good is inherently superior to evil (that is, that both are "equal" in value). To this philosopher, everything is justifiable, except that without a standard to measure by, no justification is necessary, or possible.
Other people, who insist that good is better than evil, still have to justify their actions--at least to themselves. Fortunately, they have a standard which they can apply, so they're in pretty good shape.
But, as you point out, different people have different standards. One man's steak dinner is another man's murder. One woman's sharia is another woman's brutal oppression. One man's art is another man's blasphemy.
Where does this leave us? Suppose I am Nietzche's Superman, free to act unfettered by morality or ethics. I have transcended these things, and they no longer apply to me. I don't have to justify my actions, but if I did, I would say that I do things because I can, or perhaps that the thing itself is its own justification.
So here I am, an enlightened being. I encounter you on the street, and take your life. To me the act itself is its own justification--I do it because I can, and because there is no reason that I should not do it. In fact, my whole enlightenment consists of never having to consider the "should nots" of any action.
To you, my act is murder--definitely evil. But that's only from your point of view. From my point of view, your so-called "evil" act is the act of a supreme being, perfect in itself, and unconcerned with the opinions of others.
Which of us is correct?
If you are correct, then my philosophy is hollow. No matter how fervently I insist that I am the Superman, I am still bound by morals and ethics--by the concept of a "good" which is superior to an "evil".
If I am correct, then only the acts of a Superman are good, and everything you say and do is evil (because it is the product of an unenlightened, inferior being).
If both of us are correct... but how can that be? Our positions are mutually contradictory. We can't both be correct... unless maybe we are correct in the eyes of a third person, an observer whose definitions of "good" and "evil" are different from either of ours."
Of course, my view of good and evil contradicts the view of this third person, and so does yours. Now we need a fourth perspective, to validate all our contradictory and mutually exclusive beliefs. Where does it end?
Here's the worst of it: if we believe that the value of things is subjective, then how can we possibly prove that such a belief is correct?
Logically, it seems that an absolute good is necessary, in order to say or do anything meaningful at all. We could claim that logic itself is meaningless, that logically true statements are no more "true" than logically false statements, but how would we prove such a claim?
Unfortunately, discussions about absolute good generally turn into discussions about religion, and discussions about religion seldom end happily for anyone involved, unless they begin by agreeing.
Actually, it's not exactly your point. My point is that evil is a perversion--a twisting, or misapplication--of good. Good, however, is not a perversion of evil. Nobody says, "evil is the right way to do things, and good is evil done wrong". That's what "wrong" is. You can't take a wrong act, say it's a right act, and that the corresponding "right" act is just the "wrong" act done wrong.
Well, you could, but then you've removed the word "wrong" from the lexicon, and abolished the concept of right and wrong altogether. If you can't measure something as "wrong", then what? Do you say "murder is right, and allowing people to live is simply murder done wrong"?
Turn the concept of wrongness on its head, and equate it morally and ethically with the concept of rightness, and both concepts become useless. Every action becomes justifiable, except that without a standard, no justification is necessary, or possible.
Put another way: if "right" and "wrong" are equally valuable, then how do you distinguish between the two? How do you know which is which? How could you even care?
I imagine there are philosophies (nihilism, perhaps) that propose exactly this. Assuming you're a serious proponent of such a philosophy, how should you live? Of course, "should" probably isn't an appropriate word, in this context, is it? But if you're serious about this, then what? Will you simply do whatever you want, without regard for morals and ethics? So far, so good, but why should you do whatever you want? How do you know that satisfying your desires is better than not satisfying your desires? Because it makes you feel good? How do you know that feeling "good" (whatever that means) is "better" (whatever that means) than not feeling "good"? But you do know that society probably won't appreciate your amoral lifestyle, so maybe you'll privately believe that "good" and "evil" are equally "good", but publicly you'll conform to the standards of society as a whole... assuming, of course, that you have any idea whether or not being shunned, imprisoned, or executed really is "worse" than the alternatives. But of course you don't know if these things are "worse", because you've renounced the whole concept of value judgements altogether. And, having done so, how can you know that your renunciation was the "right" thing to do?
Finally, if you persist in this philosophy, then you have no grounds for protesting any act perpetrated against you. Why should I not key your car, or rape your women, or pillage your home, or cut off your legs, or whatever else I "choose" (while keeping in mind that "choice" is a meaningless concept, since all options are equally valuable) to do? After all, your "suffering" is no less "good" (or no more "evil") than your "contentment", or whatever.
It's not a tricky problem at all: If his company has a commercial interest in being easy to find, they can always pay for it. In fact, for a fee, Google will put a link to the company's website above every single unpaid search result on the relevant keywords.
Everybody watches the Superbowl, making it an excellent place to run an ad. In fact, it's so popular that the people in charge of these things can set pretty much any price they want on advertising minutes during the Superbowl. Why don't you go complain to the NFL, or the TV networks, or whoever about how they're unfairly using the popularity of their service to price his company out of the market?
Assume Google is lying about the integrity of their algorithyms. What then?
Either Google's results aren't as relevant (and therefore not as useful) as they appear to be; or Google's results are every bit as relevant as they appear, but for some reason Google is lying about how they get such good results.
Which leaves me with two questions for you:
In your experience, has the quality of Google's results not lived up to their claims?
or
Are you proposing that Google is getting the best, most relevant, most useful results of any search engine currently available by using biased techniques (which they are covering up)?
Because Oklahoma courts have a near-identical case already on record, that sets a precedent in Google's favor. Google's strongest chance to win the case is in Oklahoma.
At least, that's how I interpreted the Lawmeme article.
It sounds like you need two things, in order to make "good" and "evil" possible: A standard of "goodness", and the option to not be standards-compliant.
If there's no standard, then all phenomena have equal value (which is equivalent to no value at all). Not that anybody would care, because without a standard we wouldn't know any better.
If there's no choice involved, then again nobody would care--we'd all comply with the standard instinctively, and the idea of deviating from it would never occur to us.
In either instance, the concepts of "good" and "evil" would never occur, since there would be no possibility of comparing the value of two things, and no possibility of choosing the "evil" thing anyway.
Good and evil may be two sides of the same coin, but they're not equally valuable. If "good" is that which is desirable, then "evil" is that which is not desireable. If "evil" had the same value as good, then it would be equally as desireable as good.
This is not, generally speaking, the case. For example, sexual intercourse is "good", but rape is "evil". Is there a valid argument that rape is just another mode of sexual intercourse, no less morally or ethically wrong than consensual intercourse?
Technically, I suppose rape is really (or primarily?) an evil form of exercising power, or displaying dominance, but the example still stands.
Yeah, but nobody does evil for evil's sake. They do it because they want some good for themselves. It doesn't matter if they're abosulute or not, for the sake of this argument. Evil is a parasite of good. Nothing can be evil unless there's already a good for it to oppose or pervert.
Guess my complaint to them last September went unheeded.:-)
That's surprising. I'll bet that the number of complaints didn't outweigh the recommendations of the "industry experts", even with the extra weighting Intuit gives to customer feedback. Maybe if more people cared, Intuit would change their minds about this policy.
Intuit may care about revenue lost through bootleg installations, or they may simply wish to give their stockholders and the industry analysts the impression that the care about "piracy".
Either way, Intuit's products own 70 to 90% of the market share in their categories, and Intuit has always been devoted to customer satisfaction.
If you don't like the way the product works, tell them. They'll care, and they'll do whatever they can to make as many customers happy as possible. The bad news is, the industry pundits are all recommending the kinds of solutions that Intuit has implemented. The good news is, your own recommendations will carry more weight, if enough of you show that you care about the problem.
Slashdot them with complaints, and I expect you'll be pleasantly surprised with the results.
And this is, I'll admit, a place where the Bayesian filter is imperfect. I'd guess that there are enough other features of my Banker's email that a good Bayesian filter could probably tell the difference between him talking to me about mortgages and a random mortgage spam, but I'm not certain.
Solving this problem should be trivial. First, any address you send an email to should be logged as potentially good. If you initiate the mortgage exchange with your banker, any replies he sends will be passed through. Every time you accept a message, the filter adds to its "picture" of what valid email looks like. If your banker sends you a follow-up email three months later ("about your mortgage", or something), "mortgage" might be a flag, but pretty much every other word in the email (and in the next generation, word clusters) will flag it as good, as will the email address and headers.
In order to for your banker to generate a false positive, his email would have to start looking a lot more like spam than it normally does, and his mail server would have to be compromised, causing you to flag every email coming from his bank as potentially spam. Even then, his signature, contact information (which your filter knows is typical of legitimate email you accept on a regular basis), and other characteristics would probably keep it safe anyway.
The scenario makes no mention of the registrant's goal. Given the details provided, there's no ethical reason to claim the domain from this guy. If they have a real complaint, then fine. If not, they should quit whining.
He claims to be on our side, but all this time people are discussing it - copyrights and all their consequences are being beaten down our throats all the harder. It is simply time force it so society can get on with the information age.
I'm not sure I follow you. If you said
"He claims to be on our side, but... he's actually working against us",
or
"He claims to be on our side, but... he's actually not doing anything at all",
I'd understand what you're saying. What you actually seem to be saying is that he claims to be on our side, but things are getting worse anyway. You claim to be on our side, but things are getting worse anyway. How come the current state of affairs is his fault, and not yours?
You seem to be against discussion, and in favor of "forcing it". What exactly do you mean? Should Lawrence stop talking and start putting guns to people's heads unless they stop sending spam, or stop claiming copy rights, or whatever? Or do you mean that the government should stop allowing the courts to rule on these cases, prohibit people from debating the issue, and just make a law abolishing copyrights?
You point out--correctly, I think--that you're entitled to your own opinions, but what if somebody else disagrees with your opinions? If they want to discuss your differences, are they "getting in the way"? Is it time to force them to comply with your views? What if they don't want to be forced? Can they force you to back off? How much force is appropriate? How much force do you think is necessary? And isn't there a kind of delicious irony inherent in forcing people to be free?
Finally, it's not exactly clear what Lawrence is getting in the way of. I'm guessing that you mean that all his discussion is giving the false impression that force won't be necessary. I don't know if force is necessary or not, but does the current situation really call for someone to jump up and say "enough talk, time for beatings"? I doubt it.
Overall, I don't really understand your opinion, but I'm very glad it's only an opinion. I'd hate to disagree with you, if your opinions were laws!
Actually, it's the conclusions of the courts and the law that are absurd. While the choice to go for arbitration instead of a lawsuit is laudable, it's not nearly as laudable as letting the guy who already registerd his domain keep the domain he already registered.
The "law" isn't some sort of perfect standard. It's more of a minimal safeguard when one or both parties in a dispute are negotiating in bad faith.
I'd rather see the company admit that it has no ethical claim to the domain name, and drop the issue.
How can a digital computer handle infinity as in Mathematica?
I hadn't thought of that. My counter argument is that the Incompleteness Theorem isn't about needing abstraction layers to contemplate the uncontemplateable, but about the fact that for any formal system there are true statements that cannot be proven by, or derived from, the rules of that system.
The rules of the formal system of Set Theory, for example, "completely" describe the properties of the infinite. Any machine that follows these rules will have no difficulty working with infinities of various kinds. However, there would still be true set-theoretical statements that the machine would be unable to derive from the rules, or (if presented with these statements) prove by the rules. The canonical demonstration would be a true set-theoretical statement about set theory itself, I think. A meta-system of Set Theory that included additional rules to handle this kind of self-reference would, of course, be subject to the same limitation ad infinitum. The problem isn't infinity per se; the problem is infinite recursion into a space that the formal system cannot--by its very nature--enter. This is problem Godel identified, and it is true for all "complete" formal systems, regardless of their complexity.
While you're right that imbalances of interest should be investigated and corrected (where appropriate--there's an imbalance of interest in favor of heterosexuality, but it probably shouldn't be "corrected" just to even out the number of "gays" and "straights" in the world). But the correction of interests should probably happen during the early socialization and education period of a person's life.
Think of it this way: quotas encourage people to take up careers that their society has been steering them away from their entire lives, while denying entry to those who have been trained and socialized for those tasks since childhood. The mixed blessing quotas bring (theoretically, anyway) is that within a few generations the artificial balance they create gives way to new socialization patterns which (hopefully) result in natural preferences based on personal interest and aptitude.
As far as meritocracy goes, the dictionary doesn't say much about the negative aspects you allude to. I know I could probably Google for more information, but would you indulge me with a clarification? The worst problem I can see with a "raw" meritocracy (that is, one untainted by whatever cultural baggage I imagine you're thinking of), is the question of who judges the judges of what is meritorious? This is the old "who watches the watchmen?" conundrum, which is useless in real life (where infinite recursions aren't a luxury any society can afford). We get around the problem by peer review, open debate, and public voting. These solutions seem to work about as well as any solution could.
Of course, a "ruthless meritocracy" would be patently unfair to those who were interested in a field but had no talent for it. This is why I'm against them. I've always wanted to win an NBA championship, even though I can't jump. Until there are quotas, The (Black) Man will always keep me down!
Slashdot Mirror
What, the idiotic stereotype of spammers? There's nothing stereotypically Muslim in the post at all!
Observe:
Are Muslims promised virgins in the afterlife? Yes.
Do Muslims worship Allah? Yes.
Do Muslims advocate the use of burkas? Yes.
Are Muslims typically underweight? Actually, I don't know. But it can't be much of a stereotype if it's not widely known, can it? Maybe it's just a misconception.
Now, the post is still offensive for other reasons, but you were probably too busy stereotyping Slashdotters as "arrogant" to notice :)
Not necessarily. When the army ships things in bulk, they really do mean bulk. At the strategic/logistical level, targetting nutrient patches would present the same difficulties as targetting MREs. At the tactical level, each soldier could carry a week's worth of the suckers without even noticing--kinda hard to create a shortage when each enemy troop has a surplus in their pockets...
Three words: morale, protein, and carbohydrates.
I imagine these things are more like mineral/vitamin supplements. They'll streamline the process of meeting the soldiers' trace element needs. They'll also (once perfected) allow the army to produce much simpler main meals, since they won't need to go out of their way to include things like vegetables and other hard-to-preserve or difficult-to-obtain menu items.
Think about it: instead of having to put together a complete breakfast for your troops, you can just feed them a generic mass of proteins and sugars, and slap a patch on them to take care of the vitamin and mineral requirements. Much faster, cheaper, and field-portable.
Not a food replacement, though.
If that's the kind of writing we're producing in college classes, then I see no reason to preserve the earth for for anybody who's in school right now, let alone future generations who will undoubtedly be even more repulsive.
Mr. Lessig's day job: Teaching "Constitutional Law" and "Law and Virtual Worlds" courses at Stanford University.
What we see here is a relationship between a law professor, the law, the Constitution, and virtual worlds. Since the law, the Constitution, and virtual worlds all came into existence, and are perpetuated, independently of Mr. Lessig, it seems clear that the purpose of Mr. Lessig as a law professor can only be understood in terms of its relationship to these things, and that he is not autotelic at all.
I could argue that perhaps Mr. Lessig has created the field of "Law and Virtual Worlds" specifically in order to perpetuate his own existence as a law professor, but I'd have to disregard the fact that virtual worlds, the law, and the intersection of the two, exists independently of his own existence as a law professor. Even if Lessig is one of the first to enter this field, we already have a word for that: pioneer. And when the pioneer has created the field which he then enters, we often use the term "genius". If Lessig is truly autotelic (which seems unlikely), then he is in good company, along with Jonas Salk, Neils Bohr, and Alan Turing, among others.
And why shouldn't he teach law? Study of the law does not make one an IP parasite. Teaching the law does not make one a greedy hypocrite. Teaching the law during the week, and applying one's knowledge of the law on weekends to promote justice and uphold fair play seems rather more laudable than the pursuits of the stereotypical lawyer.
Perhaps the Troll would care to offer some counter-examples that distinguish Mr. Lessig as a greedy hypocrite, rather than the admirable figure the documented evidence seems to present?
"Most"? What kind of assertion is that? Real numbers, and sources, please. At least the original poster actually provided a title, author, and publisher, along with concrete examples of what they liked about the work in question.
What's wrong with saying, "most non-Japanese manga artists and aficionados don't seem to 'get it', so you should probably check into these guys' credentials before you commit yourself to their way of thinking"?
Come to think of it, nobody becomes a manga expert overnight. Everybody's going to start somewhere, and they're always going to start out thinking that the little piece they've just discovered is the whole picture. It's rarely helpful to tell the beginner how stupid they are for not already being a master.
I doubt that you're the only person who ever figured out that manga is a rich and diverse art form. Do you really think that nobody else but you ever noticed that there was more to manga than "big breasts and scantily-clad females"? You may be an expert in western manga manuals (which I also doubt), but you can't tell me you're more of an expert than the people who write and publish books on the subject. Not without showing some samples of your own work or research to back up your claims, anyway. The other guys have written whole books on the subject--what have you ever done for the community?
Have you even read the book in question? How do you know anything about it? What if the authors acknowledge the wide range of manga styles? What if they make it clear that they're only focusing on a particular subgenre? What if they include a well-written forword, that discusses manga in general with insight and care? What if they conclude with a chapter of references to more detailed works, or works in other subgenres, or works by more sophisticated authors, dealing with more sophisticated aspects of manga? What if dropping a few names, and trashing authors and readers you know nothing about, makes you look... what's that word? Oh, right: "like an ass".
No worries--the discussion was getting a little too serious, wasn't it?
The question then, of course, is justifiable to whom?
I'll take the second point first: the question is applicable to the hypothetical "equalist" philosopher, who rejects the idea that good is inherently superior to evil (that is, that both are "equal" in value). To this philosopher, everything is justifiable, except that without a standard to measure by, no justification is necessary, or possible.
Other people, who insist that good is better than evil, still have to justify their actions--at least to themselves. Fortunately, they have a standard which they can apply, so they're in pretty good shape.
But, as you point out, different people have different standards. One man's steak dinner is another man's murder. One woman's sharia is another woman's brutal oppression. One man's art is another man's blasphemy.
Where does this leave us? Suppose I am Nietzche's Superman, free to act unfettered by morality or ethics. I have transcended these things, and they no longer apply to me. I don't have to justify my actions, but if I did, I would say that I do things because I can, or perhaps that the thing itself is its own justification.
So here I am, an enlightened being. I encounter you on the street, and take your life. To me the act itself is its own justification--I do it because I can, and because there is no reason that I should not do it. In fact, my whole enlightenment consists of never having to consider the "should nots" of any action.
To you, my act is murder--definitely evil. But that's only from your point of view. From my point of view, your so-called "evil" act is the act of a supreme being, perfect in itself, and unconcerned with the opinions of others.
Which of us is correct?
If you are correct, then my philosophy is hollow. No matter how fervently I insist that I am the Superman, I am still bound by morals and ethics--by the concept of a "good" which is superior to an "evil".
If I am correct, then only the acts of a Superman are good, and everything you say and do is evil (because it is the product of an unenlightened, inferior being).
If both of us are correct... but how can that be? Our positions are mutually contradictory. We can't both be correct... unless maybe we are correct in the eyes of a third person, an observer whose definitions of "good" and "evil" are different from either of ours."
Of course, my view of good and evil contradicts the view of this third person, and so does yours. Now we need a fourth perspective, to validate all our contradictory and mutually exclusive beliefs. Where does it end?
Here's the worst of it: if we believe that the value of things is subjective, then how can we possibly prove that such a belief is correct?
Logically, it seems that an absolute good is necessary, in order to say or do anything meaningful at all. We could claim that logic itself is meaningless, that logically true statements are no more "true" than logically false statements, but how would we prove such a claim?
Unfortunately, discussions about absolute good generally turn into discussions about religion, and discussions about religion seldom end happily for anyone involved, unless they begin by agreeing.
Well, you could, but then you've removed the word "wrong" from the lexicon, and abolished the concept of right and wrong altogether. If you can't measure something as "wrong", then what? Do you say "murder is right, and allowing people to live is simply murder done wrong"?
Turn the concept of wrongness on its head, and equate it morally and ethically with the concept of rightness, and both concepts become useless. Every action becomes justifiable, except that without a standard, no justification is necessary, or possible.
Put another way: if "right" and "wrong" are equally valuable, then how do you distinguish between the two? How do you know which is which? How could you even care?
I imagine there are philosophies (nihilism, perhaps) that propose exactly this. Assuming you're a serious proponent of such a philosophy, how should you live? Of course, "should" probably isn't an appropriate word, in this context, is it? But if you're serious about this, then what? Will you simply do whatever you want, without regard for morals and ethics? So far, so good, but why should you do whatever you want? How do you know that satisfying your desires is better than not satisfying your desires? Because it makes you feel good? How do you know that feeling "good" (whatever that means) is "better" (whatever that means) than not feeling "good"? But you do know that society probably won't appreciate your amoral lifestyle, so maybe you'll privately believe that "good" and "evil" are equally "good", but publicly you'll conform to the standards of society as a whole... assuming, of course, that you have any idea whether or not being shunned, imprisoned, or executed really is "worse" than the alternatives. But of course you don't know if these things are "worse", because you've renounced the whole concept of value judgements altogether. And, having done so, how can you know that your renunciation was the "right" thing to do?
Finally, if you persist in this philosophy, then you have no grounds for protesting any act perpetrated against you. Why should I not key your car, or rape your women, or pillage your home, or cut off your legs, or whatever else I "choose" (while keeping in mind that "choice" is a meaningless concept, since all options are equally valuable) to do? After all, your "suffering" is no less "good" (or no more "evil") than your "contentment", or whatever.
The mind boggles, does it not?
Everybody watches the Superbowl, making it an excellent place to run an ad. In fact, it's so popular that the people in charge of these things can set pretty much any price they want on advertising minutes during the Superbowl. Why don't you go complain to the NFL, or the TV networks, or whoever about how they're unfairly using the popularity of their service to price his company out of the market?
Two words that make all the difference: Food and Drugs.
Wake me up when Google's PageRank system becomes a matter of life and death, and I'll vote for regulation.
Assume Google is lying about the integrity of their algorithyms. What then?
Either Google's results aren't as relevant (and therefore not as useful) as they appear to be; or Google's results are every bit as relevant as they appear, but for some reason Google is lying about how they get such good results.
Which leaves me with two questions for you:
In your experience, has the quality of Google's results not lived up to their claims?
or
Are you proposing that Google is getting the best, most relevant, most useful results of any search engine currently available by using biased techniques (which they are covering up)?
Maybe looking unfriendly is part of the plan.
Because Oklahoma courts have a near-identical case already on record, that sets a precedent in Google's favor. Google's strongest chance to win the case is in Oklahoma. At least, that's how I interpreted the Lawmeme article.
Unlike, for example, Yakovisms such as
"In Soviet Russia, Trolls mod you!"
Come to think of it, that's true here, as well.
It sounds like you need two things, in order to make "good" and "evil" possible: A standard of "goodness", and the option to not be standards-compliant.
If there's no standard, then all phenomena have equal value (which is equivalent to no value at all). Not that anybody would care, because without a standard we wouldn't know any better.
If there's no choice involved, then again nobody would care--we'd all comply with the standard instinctively, and the idea of deviating from it would never occur to us.
In either instance, the concepts of "good" and "evil" would never occur, since there would be no possibility of comparing the value of two things, and no possibility of choosing the "evil" thing anyway.
Good and evil may be two sides of the same coin, but they're not equally valuable. If "good" is that which is desirable, then "evil" is that which is not desireable. If "evil" had the same value as good, then it would be equally as desireable as good.
This is not, generally speaking, the case. For example, sexual intercourse is "good", but rape is "evil". Is there a valid argument that rape is just another mode of sexual intercourse, no less morally or ethically wrong than consensual intercourse?
Technically, I suppose rape is really (or primarily?) an evil form of exercising power, or displaying dominance, but the example still stands.
Yeah, but nobody does evil for evil's sake. They do it because they want some good for themselves. It doesn't matter if they're abosulute or not, for the sake of this argument. Evil is a parasite of good. Nothing can be evil unless there's already a good for it to oppose or pervert.
That's surprising. I'll bet that the number of complaints didn't outweigh the recommendations of the "industry experts", even with the extra weighting Intuit gives to customer feedback. Maybe if more people cared, Intuit would change their minds about this policy.
Intuit may care about revenue lost through bootleg installations, or they may simply wish to give their stockholders and the industry analysts the impression that the care about "piracy".
Either way, Intuit's products own 70 to 90% of the market share in their categories, and Intuit has always been devoted to customer satisfaction.
If you don't like the way the product works, tell them. They'll care, and they'll do whatever they can to make as many customers happy as possible. The bad news is, the industry pundits are all recommending the kinds of solutions that Intuit has implemented. The good news is, your own recommendations will carry more weight, if enough of you show that you care about the problem.
Slashdot them with complaints, and I expect you'll be pleasantly surprised with the results.
Conflict of Interest: I work for Intuit.Solving this problem should be trivial. First, any address you send an email to should be logged as potentially good. If you initiate the mortgage exchange with your banker, any replies he sends will be passed through. Every time you accept a message, the filter adds to its "picture" of what valid email looks like. If your banker sends you a follow-up email three months later ("about your mortgage", or something), "mortgage" might be a flag, but pretty much every other word in the email (and in the next generation, word clusters) will flag it as good, as will the email address and headers.
In order to for your banker to generate a false positive, his email would have to start looking a lot more like spam than it normally does, and his mail server would have to be compromised, causing you to flag every email coming from his bank as potentially spam. Even then, his signature, contact information (which your filter knows is typical of legitimate email you accept on a regular basis), and other characteristics would probably keep it safe anyway.
The scenario makes no mention of the registrant's goal. Given the details provided, there's no ethical reason to claim the domain from this guy. If they have a real complaint, then fine. If not, they should quit whining.
I'm not sure I follow you. If you said
"He claims to be on our side, but... he's actually working against us",
or
"He claims to be on our side, but... he's actually not doing anything at all",
I'd understand what you're saying. What you actually seem to be saying is that he claims to be on our side, but things are getting worse anyway. You claim to be on our side, but things are getting worse anyway. How come the current state of affairs is his fault, and not yours?
You seem to be against discussion, and in favor of "forcing it". What exactly do you mean? Should Lawrence stop talking and start putting guns to people's heads unless they stop sending spam, or stop claiming copy rights, or whatever? Or do you mean that the government should stop allowing the courts to rule on these cases, prohibit people from debating the issue, and just make a law abolishing copyrights?
You point out--correctly, I think--that you're entitled to your own opinions, but what if somebody else disagrees with your opinions? If they want to discuss your differences, are they "getting in the way"? Is it time to force them to comply with your views? What if they don't want to be forced? Can they force you to back off? How much force is appropriate? How much force do you think is necessary? And isn't there a kind of delicious irony inherent in forcing people to be free?
Finally, it's not exactly clear what Lawrence is getting in the way of. I'm guessing that you mean that all his discussion is giving the false impression that force won't be necessary. I don't know if force is necessary or not, but does the current situation really call for someone to jump up and say "enough talk, time for beatings"? I doubt it.
Overall, I don't really understand your opinion, but I'm very glad it's only an opinion. I'd hate to disagree with you, if your opinions were laws!
"Oh shit! A plane just hit the WTC!"
"See? We told you guys MS was evil."
Actually, it's the conclusions of the courts and the law that are absurd. While the choice to go for arbitration instead of a lawsuit is laudable, it's not nearly as laudable as letting the guy who already registerd his domain keep the domain he already registered.
The "law" isn't some sort of perfect standard. It's more of a minimal safeguard when one or both parties in a dispute are negotiating in bad faith.
I'd rather see the company admit that it has no ethical claim to the domain name, and drop the issue.
Look at me having completely misread your original post! I apologise.
Thanks for the link on meritocracy, by the way. Now that I have some free time, I will give more than my usual amount of attention :)
I hadn't thought of that. My counter argument is that the Incompleteness Theorem isn't about needing abstraction layers to contemplate the uncontemplateable, but about the fact that for any formal system there are true statements that cannot be proven by, or derived from, the rules of that system.
The rules of the formal system of Set Theory, for example, "completely" describe the properties of the infinite. Any machine that follows these rules will have no difficulty working with infinities of various kinds. However, there would still be true set-theoretical statements that the machine would be unable to derive from the rules, or (if presented with these statements) prove by the rules. The canonical demonstration would be a true set-theoretical statement about set theory itself, I think. A meta-system of Set Theory that included additional rules to handle this kind of self-reference would, of course, be subject to the same limitation ad infinitum. The problem isn't infinity per se; the problem is infinite recursion into a space that the formal system cannot--by its very nature--enter. This is problem Godel identified, and it is true for all "complete" formal systems, regardless of their complexity.
Think of it this way: quotas encourage people to take up careers that their society has been steering them away from their entire lives, while denying entry to those who have been trained and socialized for those tasks since childhood. The mixed blessing quotas bring (theoretically, anyway) is that within a few generations the artificial balance they create gives way to new socialization patterns which (hopefully) result in natural preferences based on personal interest and aptitude.
As far as meritocracy goes, the dictionary doesn't say much about the negative aspects you allude to. I know I could probably Google for more information, but would you indulge me with a clarification? The worst problem I can see with a "raw" meritocracy (that is, one untainted by whatever cultural baggage I imagine you're thinking of), is the question of who judges the judges of what is meritorious? This is the old "who watches the watchmen?" conundrum, which is useless in real life (where infinite recursions aren't a luxury any society can afford). We get around the problem by peer review, open debate, and public voting. These solutions seem to work about as well as any solution could.
Of course, a "ruthless meritocracy" would be patently unfair to those who were interested in a field but had no talent for it. This is why I'm against them. I've always wanted to win an NBA championship, even though I can't jump. Until there are quotas, The (Black) Man will always keep me down!