I think what the founder of Greenpeace said was more specific. He now takes the position that the new pepple bed reactors are safer than the danger posed by global warming. He never said they were wrong in the past, just that nuclear power is probably now safe enough.
The whole "Fair and Balanced" thing is regarded as a bad joke now. Maybe not six years ago, but now Americans are pretty sheepish about the whole affair. But it's not brought up in polite conversation.
Anyway, the point I wanted to make is that bias is one thing, but distortion is quite another. When one's bias leads one to gross distortions, then there's a problem. I think that's what the poster was getting at.
You could be correct, and I agree we need to think long term. But I'm very suspicious of value-based policy. Often people make the "rational" argument, eg "The bottom line is", when really they're saying "Suck it up, we're in charge, and we're going to continue to reap the benefits of our economic advantage over you." Things that are hard to assign a value to, eg security, clean water, etc, are down played, while thing easy to analyze economically, eg the price of commodities, are given priority.
Thanks for adding a bit of sanity to the discussion. I get bored reading my own email!
Any device is subject to subpoena
on
Gmail vs Pine
·
· Score: 1
Email stored anywhere is subject to subpoena. I guess there's some safety if your running your own email server--you can delete incriminating emails. But for many of us, even the technically inclined, we're short on hours in the day as it is and we don't want more admin responsibilities.
I just don't want people to get the impression that it's only Google that's holding on to your emails. There are copies of your email on servers all over the globe, some persisting longer than others. And even if your careful with you're email server, you have no control over replies you've sent, except to not use the reply, or configure to not copy original content, or carefully delete unwanted material.
NPR is a media organization. Their focus is on public discussion, information dissemination, and issue analysis. As such, NPR is much more useful, and threatening to the status quo, than they would be if they were a politicized organization such as MoveOn.org or the American Heritage Foundation. (And yes, I did mean the American Heritage Foundation.)
This is so true. There's a super market withing a few blocks of my home in Phoenix, but I would never bike there. You'd be taking your life in your hands. There's no margin between the street and the footpath (sidewalk) and drivers are just not looking out for bikes.
Canberra, Australia, (a city just a few decades old) has a great system of walking/biking trails. You could almost get from one part of the city to any other without leaving the bike trail. All trails tunnel under major road ways. But hey, those whacky Australians will try anything. They don't feel obligated to always keep with convention. (Yes, I split an infinitive. WTF cares.)
Am I? Look at number 8, "Statements must not be published `maliciously'." Wow, that's really got to chill comment. If I said something maliciously, even truth isn't a defense. Something said that makes someone look bad has to seem malicious.
Regarding litigation, see number 6, "words spoken in the ordinary course of legal proceedings" have absolute privilege.
So, the only thing I got technically wrong was saying that even truth is not a defense. However, given point 8, I wouldn't be willing say something against a private individaul even it was true and in the public's interest to know.
I think the document you refer to backs me up. I've lived 1/4 of my life in Australia. I've followed defamation action. In fact, there was one Australian citizen who successfully ran for a state senate seat just so he could make comments without fear of being sued for libel. There is a fundamental difference between the British and American traditions regarding free speech and libel.
Australians are keenly aware of the fact that even though the law says that truth is a defense, in practice, it is not always successful.
British libel laws do act as censorship. Truth is not even a defense. If you say something that hurts someone's reputation, even if what you say is true, you can be sued for libel. Same in Australia. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.) One exception is public figures. You can say just about anything you like about elected officials.
My "quip" was rude but not thoughtless. I was applying kind to kind. You grouped people, proceeded to malign that group, and finished of by declaring there're so bad we can't even entertain their views.
It sounds to me as though you have a philisophy of Luther/Calvin materialism, which is fine. It's a big club. But I'm not going to try to convince anyone that I've understood.
Regarding the morality that you suggest should exist in me that would lead me to respect your property even if there were no law; is that an inherent morality?
Regarding the inherent, value-added dichotomy. I don't think it's valid to use the term "inherent" to frame the issue and then proceed to argue that nothing has inherent value, therefore people who believe in the inherent value of nature are mistaken. Like I indicated before, this is a trick of semantics. If nothing has inherent value, which could very well be, then another word must be chosen to describe the opposing viewpoint. Otherwise the discussion is meaningless because you've defined the terms in such a way that positions on the issue (except for your own) are untenable. You can certainly disagree with their premise, but then you must make a convincing argument of your own. It is insufficient to only proclaim your indignation--or be prepared for snarky replies.
I bet you value tampons if a woman's sitting on your white sofa. Just joking.
Yes, it's aquired, the flu is bad because it kills people. If the virus was inherently bad, that would mean that if it were alone in the universe, with nothing to infect, ever, it would still have to be bad. That sound weird to me.
I'm afraid I have to call a non sequitur on you. The point is, no amount of wishing will remove you from the environment and it's benefits and consequences. We are inextricably linked. In this model, the concept of acquired value is sort of meaningless.
The counter arguments only work because the constituents of exchange are isolated. The truth of the statement "a virus alone in the universe in neither good nor evil" says nothing about the truth of my assertions. You can't claim an obvious truth implies falsehood of a position.
Against my better judgement, I'm going to cast petrol on the fire. Saying healthy ecosystems is an acquired value is merely a rhetorical slight of hand. It's taking an important concept, eg finding balance between environment and industry, and saying something esoteric is at stake--you're rights are in danger. Framed this way, irresponsible industrial activity is easier to argue for.
Here's some satire: Industrial advertising tag line: "Breathing. It's an acquired value."
How about this from a conservative think tank: "The Krebs cycle. You acquired this value because liberal, humanist teachers indoctrinated you with their evil science when you were young and impressionable."
It is asinine, good thing I didn't come up with it. Otherwise I might think I was a real jerk.
Ooops! Please accept my apologies.
I still don't follow that argument. Clean air might be valuable to the person in the next state, or to the human race a a whole, but that would still be valuing it based on utility. To make it inherently valuable, you would have to say that "It just is." or "Because it's natural" - almost any other "It's valuable because..." statment would mean that it has aquired value, not inherent value.
Granted, the argument is sort of circular. It's a world model sort of thing, sort of rounding out the "It just is" into a philosophical framework. The references to tides and wind indicate the indifference of nature. How about the flip side. We could have another flu pandemic in which millions die. Is that an aquired "dis-value" or negative aquired value? It's pretty basic. You can't get any baser. Virus mutates, thrives, people die. The idea that we're apart from nature is an illusion.
I could also use the origins of life argument. We only have a hospitible atmosphere because billions of years ago sun-powered demi-yeasts (made up word) used light and carbon dioxide to fuel reproduction, and coincidentally expelled oxygen. You can't get any more inherent.
Also, the health of my children is pretty important. How inherent is it to them that they are born healthy? Is it mere utility that their mother's blood is not carrying toxins absorbed from dirty air? I just don't think the assertion can be made that good health is an aquired value or only useful. It is primitive and essential. The same follows for clean air.
The poster was taking the moral high ground, hence the use of the word "repugnant." (Actually, I'm not sure if he first used it. I haven't read all the posts in the thread.) You can't, or at shouldn't, take on such an argument directly (which is often why it is employed). So, I can appreciate that you were pointing out that I hadn't made an argument in the classic debate sense, but I wasn't trying to. His post didn't, although his language suggested that he was making a classic argument; note the "inherent value" clause being adroitly qualified with the phrase "that the livliehood of humans must not interfere with". Beautiful sentence structure, I give him that.
So when I suggested I would spoil his land in pursuit of my industry, I was taking his view to a silly extreme. Indeed, it was a statement of the fallacious "garden path" variety. Interesting though, his response was that he was legally protected, suggesting that property has some special value protected from my activities (and rightfully so--property should have legal protection). Funny, his property deserves distinction because it exists in a legal framework. I'm not sure where this legal framework comes from. Certainly not god. Why should I adhere to it? You don't suppose it hase some intrinsic value? Otherwise, might I ignore it for all areas that it is of no use to me?
This is my conclusion, which you're free to disagree with: at this stage we're just playing with semantics and I assert we can almost freely interchange, in this context, legal with moral. Otherwise we run the danger of saying I exist in a constitutional framework, my property is protected by the law. You, however, exist out of the bounds of a sovereign nation (or even, my sovereign nation) and have nothing more than a moral claim to your property.
Back to the robot analogy (nice work, BTW), it seems Adam is interested in value but doesn't want to entertain the idea that regard of that value is an issue of morality. Similarly, regard for the environment goes beyond the framework of utility because nature doesn't make distinctions for man made constructs. Eg, you can't legislate the tides and the wind blows across state lines.
BTW, the whole "Behold your failure to understand" is terrifically asinine. But I won't hold you to it.
If I treat nature as having inherent value, then my economic activities would have little or no chance of negatively impacting his health and property. If, however, I believe (or, at least state I believe) that we can draw a bold line between nature and industry, then even my geographically remote activities can affect his health and the vitality of his immediate environment.
Sure, my example was decidedly simplistic and did not address his argument straight on. I chose to attack the world view with no small amount of derison.
To follow up your analogy, Adam would have said, "I use them extensively, but I don't think robots have inherent value," to which Beth replied, "You won't mind, then, that I design public areas to purposefully interfere with the efficient functioning of robots."
BTW, you are rude. You should select your words more carefully if you don't want to offend. Otherwise, don't apologize.
But there is. I gave an extremely simple example that counters his assertion that we must never indulge an ecosystem (in this case, the poster's home, property, and the land it rests on) over someone's livelihood (being mine, which, for instance, could be entertaining people with food and drink, which would account for the regular accumulation of sewerage that I must discharge--and, as you know, restaurant margins are very thin, so I would need to cut costs wherever possible; so his home is downhill from my discharge are--bad luck!).
Now, imagine a country A that dumps a bunch of mercury into a river as part of its widget production process. Subsequent to the discharge point, the river flows into another country B that uses the water for irrigation and fishing. Now, wouldn't insisting on a healthy river ecosystem so that country B could grow and harvest safe food impinge on the livelihood of some of the citizen's of country A? What if you lived in country B and your child was born with defects due to mercury poisoning?
inherent: Existing as an essential constituent or characteristic; intrinsic.
ecosystem: An ecological community together with its environment, functioning as a unit.
Let me see you build an economy without an ecosystem. It cannot be done. The environment is intrinsic, inherent, and essential. What we need is to retain some balance so the we have a sustainable economy; we do not what to consume all of our environmental capital, we want to live off its interest.
And your objections to draining my septic tank on your property, that wouldn't have anything to do with upsetting your ecosystem?
Slashdot Mirror
I think what the founder of Greenpeace said was more specific. He now takes the position that the new pepple bed reactors are safer than the danger posed by global warming. He never said they were wrong in the past, just that nuclear power is probably now safe enough.
Nicely put.
Anyway, the point I wanted to make is that bias is one thing, but distortion is quite another. When one's bias leads one to gross distortions, then there's a problem. I think that's what the poster was getting at.
You could be correct, and I agree we need to think long term. But I'm very suspicious of value-based policy. Often people make the "rational" argument, eg "The bottom line is", when really they're saying "Suck it up, we're in charge, and we're going to continue to reap the benefits of our economic advantage over you." Things that are hard to assign a value to, eg security, clean water, etc, are down played, while thing easy to analyze economically, eg the price of commodities, are given priority.
Thanks for adding a bit of sanity to the discussion. I get bored reading my own email!
I just don't want people to get the impression that it's only Google that's holding on to your emails. There are copies of your email on servers all over the globe, some persisting longer than others. And even if your careful with you're email server, you have no control over replies you've sent, except to not use the reply, or configure to not copy original content, or carefully delete unwanted material.
It's time to put down the pipe.
That's a big club, of which I am a charter member! :)
I'm crying. You've shattered the delusion.
NPR is a media organization. Their focus is on public discussion, information dissemination, and issue analysis. As such, NPR is much more useful, and threatening to the status quo, than they would be if they were a politicized organization such as MoveOn.org or the American Heritage Foundation. (And yes, I did mean the American Heritage Foundation.)
ff! lol!!
+1 Bloody Oath, Nicely Said
+1 Damn funny
This is so true. There's a super market withing a few blocks of my home in Phoenix, but I would never bike there. You'd be taking your life in your hands. There's no margin between the street and the footpath (sidewalk) and drivers are just not looking out for bikes.
Canberra, Australia, (a city just a few decades old) has a great system of walking/biking trails. You could almost get from one part of the city to any other without leaving the bike trail. All trails tunnel under major road ways. But hey, those whacky Australians will try anything. They don't feel obligated to always keep with convention. (Yes, I split an infinitive. WTF cares.)
Regarding litigation, see number 6, "words spoken in the ordinary course of legal proceedings" have absolute privilege.
So, the only thing I got technically wrong was saying that even truth is not a defense. However, given point 8, I wouldn't be willing say something against a private individaul even it was true and in the public's interest to know.
I think the document you refer to backs me up. I've lived 1/4 of my life in Australia. I've followed defamation action. In fact, there was one Australian citizen who successfully ran for a state senate seat just so he could make comments without fear of being sued for libel. There is a fundamental difference between the British and American traditions regarding free speech and libel.
Australians are keenly aware of the fact that even though the law says that truth is a defense, in practice, it is not always successful.British libel laws do act as censorship. Truth is not even a defense. If you say something that hurts someone's reputation, even if what you say is true, you can be sued for libel. Same in Australia. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.) One exception is public figures. You can say just about anything you like about elected officials.
My "quip" was rude but not thoughtless. I was applying kind to kind. You grouped people, proceeded to malign that group, and finished of by declaring there're so bad we can't even entertain their views.
It sounds to me as though you have a philisophy of Luther/Calvin materialism, which is fine. It's a big club. But I'm not going to try to convince anyone that I've understood.
Regarding the morality that you suggest should exist in me that would lead me to respect your property even if there were no law; is that an inherent morality?
Regarding the inherent, value-added dichotomy. I don't think it's valid to use the term "inherent" to frame the issue and then proceed to argue that nothing has inherent value, therefore people who believe in the inherent value of nature are mistaken. Like I indicated before, this is a trick of semantics. If nothing has inherent value, which could very well be, then another word must be chosen to describe the opposing viewpoint. Otherwise the discussion is meaningless because you've defined the terms in such a way that positions on the issue (except for your own) are untenable. You can certainly disagree with their premise, but then you must make a convincing argument of your own. It is insufficient to only proclaim your indignation--or be prepared for snarky replies.
I bet you value tampons if a woman's sitting on your white sofa. Just joking.
I'm afraid I have to call a non sequitur on you. The point is, no amount of wishing will remove you from the environment and it's benefits and consequences. We are inextricably linked. In this model, the concept of acquired value is sort of meaningless.
The counter arguments only work because the constituents of exchange are isolated. The truth of the statement "a virus alone in the universe in neither good nor evil" says nothing about the truth of my assertions. You can't claim an obvious truth implies falsehood of a position.
Against my better judgement, I'm going to cast petrol on the fire. Saying healthy ecosystems is an acquired value is merely a rhetorical slight of hand. It's taking an important concept, eg finding balance between environment and industry, and saying something esoteric is at stake--you're rights are in danger. Framed this way, irresponsible industrial activity is easier to argue for.
Here's some satire: Industrial advertising tag line: "Breathing. It's an acquired value."
How about this from a conservative think tank: "The Krebs cycle. You acquired this value because liberal, humanist teachers indoctrinated you with their evil science when you were young and impressionable."
Ooops! Please accept my apologies.
I still don't follow that argument. Clean air might be valuable to the person in the next state, or to the human race a a whole, but that would still be valuing it based on utility. To make it inherently valuable, you would have to say that "It just is." or "Because it's natural" - almost any other "It's valuable because ..." statment would mean that it has aquired value, not inherent value.
Granted, the argument is sort of circular. It's a world model sort of thing, sort of rounding out the "It just is" into a philosophical framework. The references to tides and wind indicate the indifference of nature. How about the flip side. We could have another flu pandemic in which millions die. Is that an aquired "dis-value" or negative aquired value? It's pretty basic. You can't get any baser. Virus mutates, thrives, people die. The idea that we're apart from nature is an illusion.
I could also use the origins of life argument. We only have a hospitible atmosphere because billions of years ago sun-powered demi-yeasts (made up word) used light and carbon dioxide to fuel reproduction, and coincidentally expelled oxygen. You can't get any more inherent.
Also, the health of my children is pretty important. How inherent is it to them that they are born healthy? Is it mere utility that their mother's blood is not carrying toxins absorbed from dirty air? I just don't think the assertion can be made that good health is an aquired value or only useful. It is primitive and essential. The same follows for clean air.
The poster was taking the moral high ground, hence the use of the word "repugnant." (Actually, I'm not sure if he first used it. I haven't read all the posts in the thread.) You can't, or at shouldn't, take on such an argument directly (which is often why it is employed). So, I can appreciate that you were pointing out that I hadn't made an argument in the classic debate sense, but I wasn't trying to. His post didn't, although his language suggested that he was making a classic argument; note the "inherent value" clause being adroitly qualified with the phrase "that the livliehood of humans must not interfere with". Beautiful sentence structure, I give him that.
So when I suggested I would spoil his land in pursuit of my industry, I was taking his view to a silly extreme. Indeed, it was a statement of the fallacious "garden path" variety. Interesting though, his response was that he was legally protected, suggesting that property has some special value protected from my activities (and rightfully so--property should have legal protection). Funny, his property deserves distinction because it exists in a legal framework. I'm not sure where this legal framework comes from. Certainly not god. Why should I adhere to it? You don't suppose it hase some intrinsic value? Otherwise, might I ignore it for all areas that it is of no use to me?
This is my conclusion, which you're free to disagree with: at this stage we're just playing with semantics and I assert we can almost freely interchange, in this context, legal with moral. Otherwise we run the danger of saying I exist in a constitutional framework, my property is protected by the law. You, however, exist out of the bounds of a sovereign nation (or even, my sovereign nation) and have nothing more than a moral claim to your property.
Back to the robot analogy (nice work, BTW), it seems Adam is interested in value but doesn't want to entertain the idea that regard of that value is an issue of morality. Similarly, regard for the environment goes beyond the framework of utility because nature doesn't make distinctions for man made constructs. Eg, you can't legislate the tides and the wind blows across state lines.
BTW, the whole "Behold your failure to understand" is terrifically asinine. But I won't hold you to it.
If I treat nature as having inherent value, then my economic activities would have little or no chance of negatively impacting his health and property. If, however, I believe (or, at least state I believe) that we can draw a bold line between nature and industry, then even my geographically remote activities can affect his health and the vitality of his immediate environment.
Sure, my example was decidedly simplistic and did not address his argument straight on. I chose to attack the world view with no small amount of derison.
To follow up your analogy, Adam would have said, "I use them extensively, but I don't think robots have inherent value," to which Beth replied, "You won't mind, then, that I design public areas to purposefully interfere with the efficient functioning of robots."
BTW, you are rude. You should select your words more carefully if you don't want to offend. Otherwise, don't apologize.
But there is. I gave an extremely simple example that counters his assertion that we must never indulge an ecosystem (in this case, the poster's home, property, and the land it rests on) over someone's livelihood (being mine, which, for instance, could be entertaining people with food and drink, which would account for the regular accumulation of sewerage that I must discharge--and, as you know, restaurant margins are very thin, so I would need to cut costs wherever possible; so his home is downhill from my discharge are--bad luck!).
Now, imagine a country A that dumps a bunch of mercury into a river as part of its widget production process. Subsequent to the discharge point, the river flows into another country B that uses the water for irrigation and fishing. Now, wouldn't insisting on a healthy river ecosystem so that country B could grow and harvest safe food impinge on the livelihood of some of the citizen's of country A? What if you lived in country B and your child was born with defects due to mercury poisoning?
inherent: Existing as an essential constituent or characteristic; intrinsic.
ecosystem: An ecological community together with its environment, functioning as a unit.
Let me see you build an economy without an ecosystem. It cannot be done. The environment is intrinsic, inherent, and essential. What we need is to retain some balance so the we have a sustainable economy; we do not what to consume all of our environmental capital, we want to live off its interest.
And your objections to draining my septic tank on your property, that wouldn't have anything to do with upsetting your ecosystem?