Maybe I am wrong, but maybe I am just not explaining myself clearly. I did not mean to imply that there is some simplistic rule for each action one might take. Rather, if there is such a thing as a correct moral code, then that code must take all circumstances into account for each decision. That is, a moral code must be relative to each specific situation it covers, but not relative to opinions or ideas of any person.
Also, while I believe there is a single moral code, I am not trying to prove that here. Rather I am saying that either there is a single correct way of determining whether an action should be considered right, wrong, or optional, or there is no way of determining that at all. Either there is one complete, correct moral code or zero of them.
When you talk of moral rules for differing needs, and rules that will be good for most cases, I get the feeling you are veering into utilitarianism. You reduce moral rules to those rules that, if followed, would make things come out the way you want them to come out. If you do that, then you don't have much "moral high ground" to criticize a serial killer for applying the same principle.
Even if we disagree though, we can probably get along together. You can work toward finding that good "common core of moral rules" and I can work toward discovering more of the "real" moral code.
Either there is no such thing as right an wrong, or it is most definitely not up to your own personal ethical code. To admit that right and wrong are a matter of preference is to destroy any useful definition of right and wrong.
Just because you say it is wrong doesn't mean it is. Is it wrong to get an abortion? Is it wrong to smoke pot? A lot of people will give you different opinions on the ethics of those issues, regardless of their legal standing.
Yes there are people who don't do it, agreed, but your declaration that it's simply wrong is a bit self-righteous.
Without saying anything about whether those particular things are right and wrong, I will make this statement: In the context of a given situation, each one of these actions is either right, wrong, or optional according to the one correct moral code. Either that, or there is no such thing as right and wrong, no such thing as a moral code that we "ought" to follow.
Many people wish to say something like "We can't favor one person's morality over the other" without accepting the full implications of that statement. Namely, if each person gets to decide right and wrong, then we lose the ability to judge any action as wrong, no matter how horrific.
That said, I don't pretend to have all the right answers about which things under which circumstances are right, wrong, and optional. But until someone convinces me otherwise, I am going to assume that the categories exist, and do my best to figure out what things go into which.
Of course the gov't acts based on faith beliefs...
on
Australia Oppresses Jedi
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Government shouldn't be allocating resources based on folks faith beliefs.
Of course the US government acts (and allocates resources) based on faith beliefs of citizens. The US is a representative republic, and so the actions of government reflect, to some extent at least, the will of the people. For many people, their faith beliefs affect their wills more than any other single factor.
The US is also properly a constitutional republic, and to the extent that we pay attention to the US Constitution, governmental action is limited. For example, the Constitution would obviously forbid establishing the Lutheran Church as the official church of the country, even if 90% of the citizens were Lutheran. However, it does not keep Lutherans from lobbying for laws that fit their particular views.
(Note: I just picked Lutheran out of a hat as an example. Don't read more into it than that.)
[...] yet it's like crack to the poor souls addicted to it (many dropping out of college, ignoring their marriages, and in one case neglecting their newborn to the point of death).
They baby (almost?) dying smells like an urban legend. Do you have a published news story reference on that?
Actually, maybe the poster was serious??? I could imagine putting the cron job on one of your main servers or workstations, easily found by "THEM." The dead-man's switch would be on some less obvious machine, in another location. When "THEY" rush in, unplug, and cart off all your machines, "THEY" unknowingly turn off the cron job.
For the most delicious irony, the most wily of you might find some way to host the dead-man's switch on one of "THEIR" machines!
Ok...so I am probably not a Congresscritter's typical constituent, but here goes...
A. Fight Terrorists
Yes, let's do it. I won't even whine (much) about my taxes being spent for this purpose.
B. Fix Economy
Yes, let's do it. Stop all industry subsidies. Lower tariffs and other trade barriers. Decrease tax rates and regulation. We can argue over the revenue impact of decreasing tax rates, but the other measures won't break the bank.
C. Teach Our Children
Not a government job, especially at the federal level. Eliminate the Department of Education and save money.
D. Fight Crime
Let's do it. The first thing to do is to free up resources to fight real crime by stopping the War on Drugs (tm). Overall, use less taxpayer money.
E. Cut Taxes
Of course.;-)
F. Reduce deficit/Debt Reduction
Let's do it. Let's save money by only funding those cabinet-level departments we really need. Let's see, Defense yes, State yes, Justice yes...um, surely there is another cabinet level department we need. When I'll think of it I'll post again.
G. Explore Mars
Hmm. Cool program, but not something I would want to be a federal program, unless it was related to defense.
Dammit, that means I posted all this for nothing, doesn't it...
I am considering buying a Treo, but want to hear from early-adopters first. Why don't you post a little more detail about your experience?
Here are some specific questions:
What is your GSM carrier and plan, and how are you liking it? I will be using VoiceStream in the Kansas City area, so would be especially interested if that is your carrier. Can you get VoiceStream iStream service on the Treo?
How annoying is the short battery life? I am not a road warrior, so I can charge my phone nightly. Is that good enough?
How bad is the rumored problem with "face oil" on the screen from talking on the phone?
How are you carrying the thing? I am thinking I'll need a belt case, since it isn't going to fit into a hip pocket like my little cell phone.
Have people gotten tired of you answering the phone by flipping up the cover and saying, "Kirk here?"
The problem with this assumption is that you don't know what other things you're screening out when you screen out the disease. A somewhat contrived example of this is Stephen Hawking. Of course no really knows the cause of ALS, but suppose it turns out to be genetic. Stephen Hawking would have been screened out of existance, and consequently all of his contributions to science.
IMHO, by doing this kind of thing, we pretend that we are God and that we can forsee every possible future. In my opinion, this is foolishness. We are too focused on our inconveniences, and spend too much effort in the avoidance of struggle. We almost universally fail to see the good that can come out of those struggles.
This is no more playing God than deciding whether to have a child or not in the first place. If Hawking's parents had not had children, then he would not have contributed to science. All our choices have consequences we cannot foresee, not just the ones that use fancy new science. Get over it, and try to make the best, most ethical choices you can.
That said, there may be other good arguments against gene screening. But this one just doesn't hold water.
The Googlewhacking site lists reader-submitted Googlewhacks...which of course causes Google to pick up a second site for the search. And so the Googlewhack is whacked!
You complete cretin. How can you generalise all crypto accourding to the keylength? Doesn't the algorythm come into it at all? A 32 bit key could be safe, and a 2^32 bit key unsafe, depending on the algorythm. Besides, I don't see you trying to assure the security of a nation.
Sheesh...cool your jets a bit, fella. A bad algorithm can make any key length unsafe, but no algorithm can make a 32-bit key safe, which was the original poster's point.
Suppose you can run the decryption algorithm in one microsecond. Then you could try every possible 32-bit key in a little under 50 days. Get faster hardware or use multiple machines to bring that number down as low a you need.
By the way, if you are going to be insulting, you might want to make sure you are right.
The real reason HTTP and port 80 is seen as neat is that it is probably already open, so you don't have to deal with that mean old network admin who just wants to spoil your fun.
You don't have to answer difficult questions about how your service is secured, how it might be exploited to reach other resources within the firewall, etc. You ride the coattails of the "harmless" web server traffic.
I don't know if I made it clear that the $99 was for local phone service, digital cable with a couple of premium channels, AND 1.5Mbit downstream internet.
Covad, Roadrunner, @home, and the ILECs are all that's left, right?
I am in Lenexa, KS. A company called Everest Connections (www.everestgt.com) has run fiber through my neighborhood. Tuesday I have an appointment to get hooked up with local phone service, digital cable with a couple of premium channel groups, and 1.5Mbit downstream internet (cable modem), all for $99 a month.
Anyone know about this company? If "broadband" is dead, I guess I'll be crawling back to Southwestern Bell and Time Warner in a week or two?;-) Seriously, if anyone has any insights on this company or its products, I'd really like to hear. I haven't been able to find much discussion of them on the net, and I am pretty much trying them out blind.
The thought occurred to me that conspirers could meet on a FPS server (Quake, Unreal, whatever), and communicate using gestures. Perhaps shooting a rocket into the third tower from the left means let's meet at the usual place. (Note that you wouldn't want to use the chat feature of the game, since that is probably coded pretty clearly in the game's client/server protocol.) This would be an extremely low-bandwidth approach, but fiendishly difficult to detect.
Well, now it is my patriotic duty to spend time checking out UT servers for potential terrorists!
I know a group of guys who were literally taking all of the porn off of the alt.binaries newsgroups to look for hidden messages, but gave up do to the volune, the low chance of actually getting a hit, etc.
Yeah, right...they were downloading porn to look for hidden messages. I can hear it now: "Hey man, I think I found a hidden message. Can you decode it for me?...my hands are full."
Progress in computer hardware has followed this curve and continues to do so. Progress in computer intelligence however, hasn't. Computers are still stupid. They can now be stupid more quickly. This isn't going to produce super-human intelligence any time soon.
We don't necessarily need to crack the strong AI problem to push us into a singularity. Exponential progress in technological capability in general will do the trick, once we hit the elbow of the curve, if it has one (which is a bit tricky to see from this side).
Because of stupid, but fast, computers, we are headed toward being able to hack our DNA (and/or proteins). This will certainly produce incremental gains in lifespan and health...perhaps it will produce dramatic ones.
Because of stupid, but fast, computers, we can simulate physical processes to enable us to engineer better widgets. Perhaps this will make routine space travel economical.
Because of stupid, but fast, computers, we are heading toward having the bulk of human knowledge instantly available to anyone net connection. How will this leverage technical progress?
Slashdot Mirror
It is a quote from the notebooks of Lazarus Long, a Robert A. Heinlein character.
It is a philosophy of life.
It is a way of thinking that can help you have a happy married life.
Maybe I am wrong, but maybe I am just not explaining myself clearly. I did not mean to imply that there is some simplistic rule for each action one might take. Rather, if there is such a thing as a correct moral code, then that code must take all circumstances into account for each decision. That is, a moral code must be relative to each specific situation it covers, but not relative to opinions or ideas of any person.
Also, while I believe there is a single moral code, I am not trying to prove that here. Rather I am saying that either there is a single correct way of determining whether an action should be considered right, wrong, or optional, or there is no way of determining that at all. Either there is one complete, correct moral code or zero of them.
When you talk of moral rules for differing needs, and rules that will be good for most cases, I get the feeling you are veering into utilitarianism. You reduce moral rules to those rules that, if followed, would make things come out the way you want them to come out. If you do that, then you don't have much "moral high ground" to criticize a serial killer for applying the same principle.
Even if we disagree though, we can probably get along together. You can work toward finding that good "common core of moral rules" and I can work toward discovering more of the "real" moral code.
Many people wish to say something like "We can't favor one person's morality over the other" without accepting the full implications of that statement. Namely, if each person gets to decide right and wrong, then we lose the ability to judge any action as wrong, no matter how horrific.
That said, I don't pretend to have all the right answers about which things under which circumstances are right, wrong, and optional. But until someone convinces me otherwise, I am going to assume that the categories exist, and do my best to figure out what things go into which.
Of course the US government acts (and allocates resources) based on faith beliefs of citizens. The US is a representative republic, and so the actions of government reflect, to some extent at least, the will of the people. For many people, their faith beliefs affect their wills more than any other single factor.
The US is also properly a constitutional republic, and to the extent that we pay attention to the US Constitution, governmental action is limited. For example, the Constitution would obviously forbid establishing the Lutheran Church as the official church of the country, even if 90% of the citizens were Lutheran. However, it does not keep Lutherans from lobbying for laws that fit their particular views.
(Note: I just picked Lutheran out of a hat as an example. Don't read more into it than that.)
They baby (almost?) dying smells like an urban legend. Do you have a published news story reference on that?
Hehe.
Actually, maybe the poster was serious??? I could imagine putting the cron job on one of your main servers or workstations, easily found by "THEM." The dead-man's switch would be on some less obvious machine, in another location. When "THEY" rush in, unplug, and cart off all your machines, "THEY" unknowingly turn off the cron job.
For the most delicious irony, the most wily of you might find some way to host the dead-man's switch on one of "THEIR" machines!
ROFLMAO. Where are mod points when I need them...
Yes, let's do it. I won't even whine (much) about my taxes being spent for this purpose.
Yes, let's do it. Stop all industry subsidies. Lower tariffs and other trade barriers. Decrease tax rates and regulation. We can argue over the revenue impact of decreasing tax rates, but the other measures won't break the bank.
Not a government job, especially at the federal level. Eliminate the Department of Education and save money.
Let's do it. The first thing to do is to free up resources to fight real crime by stopping the War on Drugs (tm). Overall, use less taxpayer money.
Of course.
Let's do it. Let's save money by only funding those cabinet-level departments we really need. Let's see, Defense yes, State yes, Justice yes...um, surely there is another cabinet level department we need. When I'll think of it I'll post again.
Hmm. Cool program, but not something I would want to be a federal program, unless it was related to defense.
Dammit, that means I posted all this for nothing, doesn't it...
I am considering buying a Treo, but want to hear from early-adopters first. Why don't you post a little more detail about your experience?
Here are some specific questions:
What is your GSM carrier and plan, and how are you liking it? I will be using VoiceStream in the Kansas City area, so would be especially interested if that is your carrier. Can you get VoiceStream iStream service on the Treo?
How annoying is the short battery life? I am not a road warrior, so I can charge my phone nightly. Is that good enough?
How bad is the rumored problem with "face oil" on the screen from talking on the phone?
How are you carrying the thing? I am thinking I'll need a belt case, since it isn't going to fit into a hip pocket like my little cell phone.
Have people gotten tired of you answering the phone by flipping up the cover and saying, "Kirk here?"
This is no more playing God than deciding whether to have a child or not in the first place. If Hawking's parents had not had children, then he would not have contributed to science. All our choices have consequences we cannot foresee, not just the ones that use fancy new science. Get over it, and try to make the best, most ethical choices you can.
That said, there may be other good arguments against gene screening. But this one just doesn't hold water.
The Googlewhacking site lists reader-submitted Googlewhacks...which of course causes Google to pick up a second site for the search. And so the Googlewhack is whacked!
Oops. You are right. My bad.
Sheesh...cool your jets a bit, fella. A bad algorithm can make any key length unsafe, but no algorithm can make a 32-bit key safe, which was the original poster's point.
Suppose you can run the decryption algorithm in one microsecond. Then you could try every possible 32-bit key in a little under 50 days. Get faster hardware or use multiple machines to bring that number down as low a you need.
By the way, if you are going to be insulting, you might want to make sure you are right.
Question: What programming language will engineers be using in 20 years?
Answer: I don't know, but they will call it Fortran.
(That joke is funnier if you were around when Fortran 8X, er 90, came into being.)
All of it. (grin)
...when I was 14-22. *grin*
The real reason HTTP and port 80 is seen as neat is that it is probably already open, so you don't have to deal with that mean old network admin who just wants to spoil your fun.
You don't have to answer difficult questions about how your service is secured, how it might be exploited to reach other resources within the firewall, etc. You ride the coattails of the "harmless" web server traffic.
Two minutes!?!? When I am cruising around looking for something, I probably average more like a page every two seconds.
To form the possessive of a noun that ends in "s," add "apostrophe s" like this:
Scott Adams's God's Debris
See here for a quick reference.
I don't know if I made it clear that the $99 was for local phone service, digital cable with a couple of premium channels, AND 1.5Mbit downstream internet.
I am in Lenexa, KS. A company called Everest Connections (www.everestgt.com) has run fiber through my neighborhood. Tuesday I have an appointment to get hooked up with local phone service, digital cable with a couple of premium channel groups, and 1.5Mbit downstream internet (cable modem), all for $99 a month.
Anyone know about this company? If "broadband" is dead, I guess I'll be crawling back to Southwestern Bell and Time Warner in a week or two?
Well, now it is my patriotic duty to spend time checking out UT servers for potential terrorists!
Yeah, but you can only sell *one* copy of any given program there...
;-0
Because of stupid, but fast, computers, we are headed toward being able to hack our DNA (and/or proteins). This will certainly produce incremental gains in lifespan and health...perhaps it will produce dramatic ones.
Because of stupid, but fast, computers, we can simulate physical processes to enable us to engineer better widgets. Perhaps this will make routine space travel economical.
Because of stupid, but fast, computers, we are heading toward having the bulk of human knowledge instantly available to anyone net connection. How will this leverage technical progress?