Jon, Jon, if you're going to be a "free speech rulz, why can't everybody just get along" kind of guy, you really need to get over this allergy you seem to have to anything labelled "Christian"...
There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions. -- G. K. Chesterton
If I hadn't been able to find the company page for the game, I would have guessed that this was a hoax/parody/whatever in the style of Jesux rather than a real product. But granted, somebody really is releasing a DOOM-style first person shooter game, with an "angels 'n' demons" theme.
My, my. AC displaying a bit of provincial jingoism. I don't know if you've been too busy working on your kernel but you might want to pay attention to what's left of the US Motor inddustry because they're buying everything up in Europe.
You mean, like the recent buyout of Daimler-Benz by Chrysler? Oops, "strike that -- reverse it.":^/
Of course, I don't know if there's a UK automaker that hasn't been bought out by an American or Continental company yet...
I can't speak for the US motor industry (if there is any of it left)
There's some (I should know, I spent a year indentured in a parts plant), but it's not like it used to be. I will never get used to "Jeep" being a German brand...:^/
... but in Europe they've been some of the big names involved in getting open standards for automation in place - fieldbus, map/top (ok they went OSI but we can forgive them a minor transgression - and sadly most of the political side of the EU still thinks that IETF is american only)
In the US as well -- MAP started with GM, although all of the "Big 3" eventually backed away from it. I don't know about penetration of fieldbus in US automotive -- although I've worked with it in non-automotive factories, and I think it's a neat technology.:^)
As for your gratitous slam on the fine OSI protocols, (disclaimer: my day job is OSI protocols), somebody ought to write up the victory of TCP/IP over OSI as a victory for Open Source (plus, of course, "rough consensus and running code" over comittees and "profiles"). Even though OSI's CLNP has technical advantages that are only now being brought to the Internet by IPv6, I suspect the OSI suite was doomed from the start by trying to "compete" against the freedom of both the BSD TCP/IP implementation and the RFC documents (and the fact that every OS vendor in the world started bundling TCP/IP). (And yes, I know about ISODE being free as well.)
You are lost in a maze of twisty little standards -- all conflicting...
As with any genre, there are a few roses growing on the dungheap of Science Fiction (to paraphrase Nietzsche), but it's one enormous mound of shit with very few roses.
Theodore Sturgeon, who has written some of those roses on the dunghill, was asked to comment on some critic's assertion that "90% of science fiction is crap."
His response -- "Well, sure. But 90% of everything is crap."
"90% of everything is crap" has now been enshrined as Sturgeon's Law (and well-correlated to Murphy's), but lots of folks don't know its origin in SF.
(And yes, I'm a fan of the genre, and yes, there is a lot of crap published with spaceships on the cover, and yes, too much of it reads like "swords&sorcery with lasers"...)
While I agree that the real "meat" of the novel didn't start until about halfway through...
If you could avoid busting a gut laughing at the Deliverator delivering pizza, I don't know what to day about your sense of humor.:^) The thing that carried me through until we got to the mythology and linguistics was that the characters were fun, the satire was on-target, and the whole thing is just screamingly funny.
Or maybe my sense of humor is just a little weird...
Kim: "It's all a little weird" Janaway: "Mr. Kim, we're Starfleet officers. Weird is part of the job."
Oh, absolutely. I didn't see the MTV piece, but the levels of cleverness involved seem pretty obvious based on Shamrock's and Sokal's respective explanations.
So, to hoax Social Text, it took extensive footnoting of the literature, plus a deep understanding of PoMo litspeak. To hoax MTV, it takes... not as much, apparantly.:^)
"I of course have zero evidence for this, but since when has that stopped any of us?"
... except on a popular culture outlet rather than on academia.
(For those who don't know, Alan Sokal is the professor who managed to get an article arguing that gravity is an arbitrary social construct accepted to a peer-reviewed journal, and promptly revealed that he had written it to see if they really would publish such a piece of obvious nonsense. The Editors Were Not Amused.)
"Television is the first truly democratic culture -- the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want." -- Clive Barnes
My (very) limited experience agrees with this. I just got my first on-line publication this week (warning: shameless self-promotion!) at linuxplanet.com, and already I've received some very high-quality constructive criticism (thanks, Ben!) which would have greatly improved the article if I had been able to incorporate it first.
My college writing teacher always insisted that the best way to improve a piece of writing was (a) thorough, ruthless review followed by (b) several revisions. This was before the web had caught on. The internet scales these possibilites for review on a scale impractical just a few years ago.
As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. -- Proverbs 27:17 (NIV)
Does the "traditional Christian moral position" include threatening someone's life?
Short answer: No.
Long answer: There are different Christian answers to the problem of force, the main two being complete pacifism and some form of "just war" reasoning. "Just war" folks tend to allow a certain amount of personal use of force as well (for example, if somebody tries to rob my house and assault my wife, I am justified in resisting them). But none of these answers really condone threatening somebody like Singer.
On the other hand, we live in a culture that celebrates violence as the "final solution" to problems. How many TV episodes and movies show that the only answer to the "bad guys" is to make sure they're all dead before the end of the episode? And then we're surprised to find that somebody who advocates killing gets a death threat? Another Christian principle is to not be suprised when you reap what you sow.
Because that's what I found most disturbing about the Singer argument. It's not because he was called a "monster" that causes him and his students to be under threat of physical violence. There are armed guards posted in his (unmarked) classroom, because people are threatening to kill him to get rid of his opinion once and for all.
So, the fact that he's been threatened means that he's above criticism? Shall I apply the same logic to folks like the KKK and WAR (White Aryan Resistance)? After all, those folks occaisionally get threats as well, so I suppose I'd better not call their ideas monstrous. It might limit everyone's freedom.
We haven't been launching government programs for the last seventy years to save home looms or blacksmiths -- let the family farm survive or die on its own merits, if it has any.
There are a couple of holes in this reasoning:
The fact that we didn't try to save other home industries is not an argument against the family farm -- perhaps we should have tried to save them as well.
You assume that the goverment farm programs have, in fact, aided the small farmer. This is not necessarily true.
If the family farm had been left to "survive or die on its own merits", it might have done better. This has not been true, however, since WWII.
Frankly, I'd rather get my food from somebody I don't have to bail out with my tax dollars every time there's bad weather.
You are not avoiding this by allowing your food supply to be provided by corporate farming.
Note how this year's farm crisis that has forced millions of dollars of federal bailouts didn't affect enough of the food supply to change prices?
Yeah, I note how lowered production has not yielded higher commodity prices for farmers. I also noted this year, when hog prices collapsed to worse than Depression prices, that pork wasn't any cheaper at the grocery store. What lesson exactly am I supposed to take from this?
Those farms should be allowed to go under.
No, they should not. The argument why is longer than I have time to go into. If you really care, I suggest you read The Unsettling of America : Culture & Agriculture by Wendell Berry, which goes into great detail about the failures of the American family farm (hint: while farmers have certainly cooperated in their own destruction, the destruction of the family farm has been deliberate corporate and government policy for decades, sad-faced politicians notwithstanding).
But there is another strong objection which I, one of the laziest of all the children of Adam, have against the Leisure State. Those who think it could be done argue that a vast machinery using electricity, water-power, petrol, and so on, might reduce the work imposed on each of us to a minimum. It might, but it would also reduce our control to a minimum. We should ourselves become parts of a machine, even if the machine only used those parts once a week. The machine would be our master, for the machine would produce our food, and most of us could have no notion of how it was really being produced. -- G. K. Chesterton
It is well past time for the small family farm to have gone the way of the small family loom and the village ferrier. The more acceleration, the better.
Why such hostility to small family farms?
Do you truly prefer depending on large megacorp semi-monopolies for your food?
Hitler's idea was that existing Jews (and gays and Pollacks, and...) were less than real persons (those of the "master race") and should be eliminated. Singer's idea is that a newborn is not yet a person, and that perhaps in some circumstances we should not allow it to develop into a person.
This seems to me a distinction without a difference. The reason that it seems different to you, I think, is because you find Hitler's sorting of humanity into "persons" and "nonpersons" via race to be abhorrent (good for you!), but you don't find Singer's sorting by age and mental faculties so troublesome. In both cases, however, the sorting, and the declaring of "nonpersons" as killable is happening.
If I have a human sperm and ovum, and I say "If I bring these together, emplant the zygote, and bring it to term, the resulting organism will have a short and painful life," I think we're almost all agreed that I shouldn't do so.
I'm not so sure about that.
[Rest of thought-experiment deleted]
We can continure the process, asking at various stages, "Should we allow this pre-person to develop into a person?", up until it is a person. When's that?
That's the problem. There is no clear line between "pre-person" and "person". Which means that the options are (1) adopt the traditional Christian viewpoint of "personhood inheres at conception," (2) Adopt the other traditional standard of "personhood inheres at birth," or (3) adopt a standard of "personhood depends on certain qualities of X, Y, and Z" and fill in the blanks for X, Y, and Z. One good thing that I think Singer and his fellow philosophers have done is to show that (2) is an unstable position, and really degenerates into either (1) or (3) when pushed. As I have one of those "metaphysical beliefs", I fall into the (1) camp. Singer, obviously, falls into the (3) camp, and would like to focus the "debate" on values for X, Y, and Z, rather than the (1) vs. (3) decision.
As it typical of these matters, there is much screaming at each other, but little discussion.
Sad but true. Although it is harder for real discussion to take place when folks like Jon Katz (returning to the original topic) seem to define an articulation of the traditional Christian moral position as "screaming."
Modern broad-mindedness benefits the rich; and benefits nobody else. -- G. K. Chesterton
Personally, I haven't even begun to formulate what I think about this idea. But I want-need to read, mull and talk about it. The wanton use of terms like "murder" and "genocide" make that impossible, and that means we aren't free either.
Translation: I haven't given the issue any solid thought, but it bugs me that some people are using a strong, clear word like "murder", and I'm afraid that will focus my thinking too much. Theyfore, they are practicing censorship.
Hogwash. While words are powerful, they are not that powerful. Polemics are not censorship. Else you'd be guilty of "censorship" by your vilification of Singer's critics here.
Singer is no monster, and the notion that he's an advocate of mass murder seems outrageously simple-minded and hysterical, a club to shut him up rather than a way to support or refute his ideas.
It may seem "simple-minded," but it's actually the entire point. Singer says that killing handicapped babies isn't murder. His opponents say that it is. That's the substance of the debate, and if you're not comfortable with the terminology, that's more a reflection on you than on Singer's critics.
... it is generally the man who is not ready to argue, who is ready to sneer. That is why, in recent literature, there has been so little argument and so much sneering. -- G. K. Chesterton, Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox
... is that it's occaisionally necessary to discuss Hitler and the Nazis, even on the Internet.
Hitler wanted to kill Jews, saying they were less than human. Singer wants to kill handicapped kids, saying that they are less than human. Therefore, Singer's position is quite similar to the Nazis, we've just changed the definition of who is untermenschen. Hitler's policies were implemented, and mass murder resulted. Singer's policies have not yet been implemented. If they were, the results would be the same -- lots of handicapped kids would be killed. Singer would not "define" this as mass murder, but I do.
So far, nobody has shown to me that there is a logical falacy in this progression; I simply get called names for daring to note the resemblance. Oh, yes, and I'm a "censor", according to Katz, for noting the resemblance and daring to exercise my own freedom of speech.
The abolition of child-killing was one of the main tenets of the early Christians, and was one of the major reasons for Christianity's success in the old Roman Empire. It went against the old Romans, who routinely killed their own children for any reason they deemed fit. So this issue strikes and the very heart of Christian belief. So it naturally cannot even be discussed.
This is why I wrote in the previous discussion that Singer is not offering any new viewpoint -- he is simply advocating a return to the old Roman practice.
But you are (ahem) reality-challenged if you believe that this is not even being discussed, as the AP news references and these very discussions on Slashdot prove.
Almost every contemporary proposal to bring freedom into the church is simply a proposal to bring tyranny into the world.... I may, it is true, twist orthodoxy so as partly to justify a tyrant. But I can easily make up a German philosophy to justify him entirely. -- G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
While I'm sure this makes a lot of sense to you, not everyone shares your religious beliefs.
I am well aware of that fact.
It's fine to use those beliefs to determine the parameters of your own behaviour. What's not fine is to use the tenets of your religion as moral backing for public policy.
Why not? Am I supposed to have to pretend to be a secularist to participate in a public debate? That's hardly "freedom of religion."
Since we are talking public policy here, I suggest that you either limit your proposal to countries with explicitly religious governments, or try again with a secular support for your position rather than a religious one.
Sorry, I'll pass on that suggestion, for a couple of reasons. One is that I think the problem of "what is a person? what defines humanity?" is irreducibly religious. Any answer will ultimately boil down to religious (or irreligious) reasons, to our beliefs about ultimate reality and meaning. To pretend otherwise is a fraud, and I think we'd get further if we just admit that this really is a religious debate. Then there might be at least the possibility of clear definitions and real working compromise.
We have actually contrived to invent a new kind of hypocrite. The old hypocrite... was a man whose aims were really worldly and practical, while he pretended that they were religious. The new hypocrite is one whose aims are really religious, while he pretends that they are worldly and practical... It is a fight of creeds masquerading as policies.... We are all, one hopes, imaginative enough to recognize the dignity and distinctness of another religion, like Islam or the cult of Apollo. I am quite ready to respect another man's faith; but it is too much to ask that I should respect his doubt, his worldly hesitations and fictions, his political bargain and make-believe.
-- G. K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World
The other reason is that I'd really rather write plainly about what I believe on this issue, rather than translate it into secular terms. I trust that people who don't share my particular religion are perfectly capable of translating into their own terms, and seeing what makes sense to them.
I cite as an example Richard Stallman, who, although an athiest, has based his Free Software philosophy squarely on the Golden Rule (a Christian teaching). Why? Because it makes sense to him. Look at the abolitionist and civil rights movements as well. Those were religious movements, which others who did not share the same religious views still joined in because the argument made compelling moral sense to them anyway.
My turn to be a touch "reactionary," as you put it...
What hubris it is for humans to even dare suggest that they are indeed exempt from natural selection.
Who made "natural selection" God that we ought to be subject to it? Since when is "might makes right, all hail the surviving lifeforms" a moral philosophy immune to criticism? Do you truly think that is is "hubris" to believe that it's wrong for us to murder each other?
This man is a genius. To think people condemn him for having a view that conflicts with their own.
I see little evidence of "genius" on Singer's part. Oh, I'm sure his IQ is respectably above 100. But he's not really developed anything new here. At most, he's articulating the logical conclusion of a line of thought that's fairly obvious given the premises. And he certainly has a knack for publicity-generating pushing of hot buttons, but that doesn't count as "genius" in my estimation.
I don't condemn Singer for having a viewpoint that's different than mine. There are lots of folks whom I don't agree with that I can respect. But I do condemn Singer for the particular viewpoint that it's OK to kill kids if they don't measure up. Same as I (arrogantly, no doubt) would condemn other people for viewpoints that say it's OK to kill people if they're not of the Chosen Race, or that it's OK rape women, or any number of other things.
[On the comparison of Singer to the Nazis:]
Oh please! This man is talking about the ending of suffering, not the complete opposite: torturing an entire people and putting them to death. The Jews weren't "unfit" to live.. Hitler was simply a sick, very sick, man.
Hitler was not simply a sick man, he was an evil man. That's a distinction that tends to get lost these days.
Keep in mind that one lesson we ought to have learned from the Nazis is that concerns about "suffering" and "compassion" can go hand in hand with a willingness to see millions die. Adolf Hitler was not a drooling monster, despite his great evil. He was apparantly nice to animals and children, didn't kick the dog, was even vegetarian. Somehow, this tenderness of heart failed him when looking at the Jews, though. And Himmler had a "compassionate" reason for ordering the construction of the gas chambers, because he felt sorry for the anguish that German soldiers were feeling carrying out the orders to execute the 'human-seeming' Jews. So he found a way to automate the process, to reduce the amount of suffering in the world...
Singer talks about reducing suffering, but the result, if his ideas are adopted, will almost certainly be the death of millions.
Throw off the shackles of conventional "thought", and actually ponder these weighty issues before making a snap judgement. The world will be better off for it.
This is namecalling. It's a sophisticated way of saying "if you don't think like me, you're obviously not thinking."
This also assumes that we get to declare answers based upon any sort of moral tradition out of bounds, as "shackles" to be thrown off rather than foundations to be built upon. Personally, I find a moral tradition that says society does not have a right to have me or my children killed because we might not measure up to some "standard" to not be much of a shackle at all. Liberating, even.
And just to show that I have spent some thought on this, let me point out that Singer himself is not being entirely consistant here. Would he begin to eat meat or wear leather if we could assure him that the animals were killed "painlessly"? If not, then why the insistance on "painless" euthanasia for children? Why not simply throw them to the dogs, or expose them to the elements, as was done by earlier tribes? It would seem that he values bulls over babies.
What should give parents the right to decide to kill their child? Is the child property, as a dog or a goat is property? What magic criteria would have to occur before parents can no longer kill their kids? Age five days? five months? five years? Fifteen years? Passing a standardized IQ test and a physical? What is there about the parent-child relationship that gives a parent the right to kill a "useless" kid, and doesn't give an employer the right to kill a useless employee? ("Termination" would have a whole new meaning...)
Oh, but since I think it's actually wrong to kill people, I guess I'm just incapable of "thinking" about these issues. Or perhaps simply incapable of being heard.
We often read nowadays of the valor or audacity with which some rebel attacks a hoary tyranny or an antiquated superstition. There is not really any courage at all in attacking hoary or antiquated things, any more than in offering to fight one's grandmother. The really courageous man is he who defies tyrannies young as the morning and superstitions fresh as the first flowers. -- G. K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World
You know, I wouldn't worry about Dr. Singer so much if he was a lone crackpot. The trouble is (as is shown already on this Slashdot discussion) that so many people are willing to go along with this nonsense. Pope John Paul II is right to warn that we have a "Culture of Death", where our answer to problems is to simply kill. [No, I am not Catholic; however, I believe JPII is absolutely correct about this.]
This is exactly what the pro-life movement has been warning about for decades now. I can date my conversion to a pro-life viewpoint pretty exactly; it was when, as part of a "bio-ethics" class, I was exposed to the viewpoints of Joseph Fletcher, Peter Singer's predecessor in such positions as the alleged morality of infanticide. I hadn't really thought about abortion very much, but I concluded that, if there was such a consensus about the fact that there really isn't any ethical difference between a fetus and a baby, that there is no magic moral pixie dust that confers personhood and humanity by a trip out of the uterus (something Singer and Fletcher would agree with), then either we arrive at a viewpoint where, if human life is sacred at all, we must treat life in the womb as sacred, or else humans are simply animals that may be killed when they are too much trouble, and there is no logical reason not to kill unwanted children, or unhappy and unwanted old people, or anyone that enough of us feel are inconvenient.
The only reason that Singer stands out is that he boldly embraces and proclaims this logical conclusion, rather than stopping short of it. So the man is not a hypocrite. I don't consider this much of a virtue. I'd rather have a person who is hypocritical and inconsistant in refusing to follow a bad premise through to clearly evil ends, than someone who in the name of "boldness" or "consistancy" or "integrity" follows through a bad premise to consistantly evil ends.
(Side note -- I'm bothered by the subtle and not-so-subtle ad hominem attacks going on here. It seems as if, according to Dr. Shapiro, Roblimo, and the majority of Slashdotters, that by definition anyone who holds to the traditional Christian position that it's simply wrong to kill children, or anyone else, because they are "defective" by some standard is "unthinking", whereas anyone who's willing to entertain Dr. Singer's philosophy is by definition an intellectual. This is nothing more than name-calling.)
At the risk of invoking Godwin's Law, I would like to know how this differs in any essential way from Nazi philosophy. The Nazis declared that ceratin people were defective, and therefore that killing them was not an immoral act, since they weren't really "human" or "people" anyway. Singer is saying the same thing, he's simply replaced "Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and anyone who doesn't get along well with the Third Reich" with "children of any race who don't measure up phyically and mentally, or whose life might cause their parents too much suffering."
I propose a simple alternative philosophy. It's not new, but neither is Singer's. It is this: that human life is sacred. It is sacred because it is a gift of God, and we are made in His image. It is a gift, and therefore we have it by simply being born into this world. As a gift, we do not earn it by being smart enough, or fit enough, or pain-free enough. We simply have it, and to deny this is to deny legitimate human freedom and dignity.
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried. -- G. K. Chesterton, What's Wrong With The World
Almost every contemporary proposal to bring freedom into the church is simply a proposal to bring tyranny into the world.... I may, it is true, twist orthodoxy so as partly to justify a tyrant. But I can easily make up a German philosophy to justify him entirely. -- G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
Food: The same food Mom used to make, only even better - and much cheaper too. Why can't this happen (yet)? There is no cheap way to mass produce food. Most food comes from growing livestock or fields upon fields of plants.
While industrial food is neither as good or as cheap as what Mom used to cook (or that we can cook for ourselves today), we practically have this situation now:
Notice that you said food that "Mom used to make," not "food that we make". The art of cooking in the home, especially from scratch, is being lost, and we are relying more and more on restaurants and highly preprocessed quick meals.
In the restaurant arena, global chains are displacing locally-owned "mom and pop" restaurants. This is due to massive brainwashing (Sagans of $$$ spent on advertising, so that even a three year old child can recognize the various corporate logos), plus a "quality" approach that emphasizes non-variability in product. The burgers and pizza from my local "Mom's Diner" and "Pizza Oven" (I am not making these names up) are usually better than those from the Big Three [McDonald's, BK, Wendy's] and Pizza Hut. But, the delivery time is slightly longer, and a bit more variable. And, while the food at Mom's Diner depends on who's in the kitchen, a Big Mac is always a Big Mac. Most consumers are choosing the slightly lower cost and increased predictability of MegaBurgerPizza, and ignoring the globalizing/monopolizing consequences.
These global food chains are also in bed with the other major global corporations, such as the media conglomerates. For instance, we all know who the PepsiCo restaurants are now, from the Star Wars: The Phantom Menace marketing, McDonald's toys are coordinated with the latest Disney release...
Does anyone remember the "We're Beatrice" ad campaign of years ago? The food processing industry is very similar to the automotive industry -- a few mega-corporations, with lots of supplier companies that are wholly or partly owned. The variety of labels on grocery store shelves is deceiving, because the same company will have different "product lines," and often the generic "alternative" is simply the same food without the heavily-advertized label.
As for farmers, while "save the family farm!" is occaisionally heard from the lips of politicians and celebrities, it's nearly too late. The U.S. Census Bureau has stopped counting farming as an occupation, because there aren't enough farmers left to be statistically significant. Of those who are left, the traditional "family farm" has become nearly extinct. Most farmers who are left are becoming "mega-farmers," relying on huge acreages and automation to farm as much as possible. Which leads into the next problem...
... that the "inputs" for farmers are controlled by a small network of large MegaCorps. There has been massive consolidation in the agribusiness industry in the last several years. This includes equipement suppliers (example: the John Deere - CASE/IH merger), the seed suppliers, and the pesticide suppliers (often the same company, example: Monsanto). This leads to situations where, for a given year, more than 25% of the U.S. corn crop is grown from a single hybrid variety, and Roundup Ready(tm) soybeans have gone in four years from zero to 55% of the U.S. soybean crop. (Roundup Ready(tm) soy is a patented gene, leading to similar problems with corporate control as software patenting.) Anyone who thinks variety in both the natural and corporate ecosystems is a good thing, and who likes to eat, ought to be concerned about such things.
Finally, the market for farm crops is dominated by a few huge global corporations, such as Cargill. So, farmers are buying their "inputs" from a market dominated by megacorps, and selling into a market dominated by megacorps. Even worse, in markets such as beef and pork, some of these large buyers are also the largest producers, and buy from themselves first. So, smaller meat producers only make sales when the large packing houses didn't create enough for themselves. This is one reason why, earlier this year, hog prices were lower than the cost of raising pigs, and effectively lower than Depression prices.
This is one reason farming is declining in popularity, as no sane person will do it. As my father puts it, he works a day job to support his farming habit.:^/
For anyone interested in this subject, I highly recommoned starting by reading The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture by Wendell Berry. Or anything else Berry has written. For an older, but eerily prescient perspective on why corporate monopolization is bad, and what we can start to do about it, see G. K. Chesterton, especially The Outline of Sanity
But there is another strong objection which I, one of the laziest of all the children of Adam, have against the Leisure State. Those who think it could be done argue that a vast machinery using electricity, water-power, petrol, and so on, might reduce the work imposed on each of us to a minimum. It might, but it would also reduce our control to a minimum. We should ourselves become parts of a machine, even if the machine only used those parts once a week. The machine would be our master, for the machine would produce our food, and most of us could have no notion of how it was really being produced. -- G. K. Chesterton
(Disclaimer: I'm more of a CLI/network driver programmer, and am new to this "Gooey" programming. I have not actually written either a GNOME or KDE app. However, this is my understanding of how the two do and don't play well together.)
First of all, it's important to realize that GNOME applications run under KDE, and KDE applications run under GNOME. So, it's not as if writing for one means that users of the other desktop can't use your program (assuming that both GNOME and KDE are installed, of course).
The GNOME and KDE teams are working out a common window management and session management specification. I suspect this is mostly relevant to people writing window managers and/or toolbar/pager applications, and not to your generic gApp or kApp program, however.
That said, it's probably not possible to write a single program that is both a GTK+ and a Qt program. The best approach would be to separate the program into a non-GUI server and a GUI-based frontend, and then you could code a GTK+/GNOME frontend and a Qt/KDE frontend (or, in the true spirit of Open Source, simply code the one you want and let a partisan from the "other side" code their favorite:^) ). Since you are guaranteed that each enviroment has a CORBA ORB, making the interface between the server and the GUI based on IDL might be smart.
Alas, Bonobo and KOM aren't really compatible object systems. Maybe in the future the teams will work out how to embed objects cross-GNOME/KDE, but don't hold your breath.
And, if only some genius would hack Glade or libglade to work with Qt, making two separate front ends wouldn't be nearly so much work. (But I'm not genius enough to do it...)
And Apple-free, as well. Welcome to the world of free software!
As a habitual critic of some of your writing, I will hope that the end of this struggle means that you will now have more time to reflect on and think through the philosophical issues of what you are writting, rather than having to struggle with pppd.:^)
Now that you've made the conversion, it would be interesting if you could tell us about how you find Linux to work for you as a writer. What were you using to write before? What are you using now? Have you converted to the emacs religion, the vi religion, or are you using a WYSIWYG application? How did you choose? What issues are you encountering as a non-programmer writer in Linux? Do you in practice have to return to the Land of Bill for publications insisting on submissions in Word(tm) format?
(At least this should eliminate stupid flamage about Microsoft "Smart Quotes"[sic]...)
While Linux is larger than Emacs, at least Linux has the excuse that it needs to be. -- Linus Torvalds
I thought about calling this "Economists: Whores and Pimps" but thought that might draw too many 'Flamebait' moderations...:^)
I think these guys just like whatever is best right now. They feel QWERTY is better than DVORAK RIGHT NOW, probably cause somebody paid them too. They feel that MS is better than No-MS because MS pays a LOT of economists to think that way.
The fundamental point of view of an economists is "Anything that causes money to flow from other people to me is good for the economy."
Some observations on economists and their activity in a slightly different industry than computers. These are from Wendell Berry's Home Economics:
It is apparantly easy to say that there are too many farmers, if one is not a farmer. This is not a pronouncement often heard in farm communities, nor have farmers yet been informed of a dangerous surplus of population in the "agribusiness" professions or among the middlemen of the food system.
No agricultural economist has yet perceived that there are too many agricultural economists. [emphasis mine] (page 129)
Surely a kind of monstrosity is involved when tenured professors recommend or even tolerate Darwinian economic policies for farmers, or announce (as one university economist after another has done) that failure of the so-called inefficient farmers is good for agriculture and good for the country. They see no inconsistancy, apparantly, between their own protectivist economy and the "free market" economy that they recommend to their supposed constituents, to whom the "free market" has proven invariably fatal. Nor do they see any inconsistancy, apparently, betweeen the economy of a university, whose sources, like that of any tax-supported institution, are highly diversified, and the extremely specialized economies that they have recommended to their farmer-constituents. Those inconsistancies nevertheless exist, and they explain why, so far, there has been no epidemic of bankrupcies among professors of agricultural economics. (page 172)
Disclaimer: I studies just enough economics in college to learn some of the vocabulary, but not enough to get brainwashed into taking economists pronouncements seriously...
I highly recommend that you find and read The Culture of Disbelief by Stephen Carter on the attempted exclusion of faith-based views from American politics and law, and then contemplate a "freedom of religion" that actually celebrated people freely and unapologetically following their religions, or a "multi-culturalism" that didn't mind people propagating their own cultures.
But just whose God are you talking about? Are you speaking about the Christian God, the Hindu God (which one), the Muslim God (arguably the Christian God)...
Oh, please. Amphigory is obviously a Christian, and is arguing as such. So clearly he believes that the Christian view of God is the correct one. Why should he pretend otherwise?
News flash: most Christians are aware that not everybody is a Christian, and that other views of God exist. But it would be incredibly tedious to have to mention that fact every time the word "God" is used, so most of us don't.
Obviously I am taking a poke at you because you seem to believe that you have the right to impose your religious views on me.
This is not about "imposing" religious views. No one is trying to forcibly convert you to Christianity.
Oh, but you mean that his viewpoint is religiously motivated, and you disagree with him, and therefore he's trying to "impose his religious view" on you? To that I have to say, "get over it." If you disagree, do so on the real grounds that you disagree. But, if Amphigory were advocating exactly the same position, not out of Christian theology but out of some secular existentialist "I-have-chosen-this-side-in-the-debate-to-actualiz e-myself" philosophy, what would you say then? I guess you have to meet the issue face on, since you couldn't dodge behind illusions of religious persecution.
Not to too strongly offend you, but take your Christian belief system and go take a long walk off a short pier.
Nice to see you not imposing your irreligion on anyone.
Keep your moral code out of our lives.
So, if I see you getting mugged someday, I should just walk on by? After all, robbery, assault, and murder are against my religion, but you wouldn't want me to go around imposing my religious views on anybody, would you?
In return I will agree to leave your children alone.
I thought the debate was precisely about how to accomplish just that.
... no man ought to write at all, or even to speak at all, unless he thinks that he is in truth and the other man in error. -- G. K. Chesterton, Heretics
someday, parents are going to have to grow up and realize that it's a big, bad world out there.
Do you have any idea how condescending this sounds?
What makes you think parents don't already realize this?
Part of good parenting, IMNSHO, is the attempt to make the home a shelter, in as much as reasonably possible, from that big bad world out there. Especially for the youngest children. Right now, I don't want my children to have to deal with some of the "realities" of life (which can be pretty unreal, at times). There will be time enough for that as they mature.
This does not mean raising kids as hothouse flowers, so delicate that they faint at the first touch of the outside air. But I do believe that kids will do better if given a chance to grow strong before exposure to the harsher elements.
teach your children what filth is.
No. I do not want to teach them what filth is. I want to teach them what health is, and hopefully the filth will be obvious by contrast.
But I am of the belief that one doesn't have to wash in filth to recognize that it is filthy.
tell them that your value system doesnt support men peeing on women or girls fucking snakes.
What about my ability as a parent to determine when it is appropriate for my children to learn about such topics?
To pick a non-Internet example, I know a lot of parents who were extremely unhappy with the media coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, because they didn't appreciate having to explain to their seven-year olds what "oral sex" was.
if you raise them correctly, seeing this garbage isnt going to permanently scar their minds.
Maybe, maybe not. I would hope so.
But what we see does affect us. Images are highly effective at implanting themselves in our brains and affecting our attitudes and behaviours. Even if we don't buy into the message at a conscious or intellectual level. This is why advertising works, and why corporations spend billions of dollars/yen/euros every year on it.
If something wounds my kids, it's not a great consolation to know that it might not scar if we're lucky.
and if you think it's going to, keep your damned kids off the internet.
If my only choices are (a) keep my kids off the Internet altogether or (b) drink from the firehose of sludge trying to get the few pearls, then what do you think I'm going to need to choose?
I'd like another choice, which is why I hope that we can come up with some sort of rating system, or at least some effective netiquette, that will allow some leeway between "all" and "nothing."
Now most modern freedom is at root fear. It is not so much that we are too bold to endure rules; it is rather that we are too timid to endure responsibilities. -- G. K. Chesterton, What's Wrong With The World
Sure, I think that we all find the net-ready fridge is silly, but we have market forces that will take care of these things. If nobody buys it, it will smoothly fade into the background of failed gadgets and dissapear from our lives. And even if there are enough consumers out there who really do want a WebFridge (/. readers, no doubt.) that does not mean that _you_ have to buy one. Every person retains the magical ability to say "This is a piece of shit and I'm not buying one." Ta da! Problem solved.
What if the only refrigerators available on the markert were WebFridges? At that point, your "choice" is to (a) get a WebFridge or (b) learn why they used to be called "iceboxes."
I run into this all the time with children's toys. I would like to be able to buy simple, classic, durable toys for my kids that aren't
cartoon ads
V-Tech "speech enhanced"
beschpreckled mit der blinkenlights und der bleepinklangen
cheap plastic sh** that breaks in two days
The problem is that "the market" has decided to stock the shelves otherwise, and I'm not a skilled enough woodworker to create them myself. We have been able to find toys that we like for the kids, but it has involved much searching and extra expen$e.
The Amish experience this on a much more profound scale. There are a few places like Lehman's which stock items which the Amish consider "appropriate technology," but in a number of ways, the Amish struggle to determine their own technology destiny against the overwhelming tide of the "English".
Jon Katz wrote about Clotho.org being a "non-coercive" way to restrain technology. I can only assume that he considers any attempt to say "let's decide not to pursue technology X" to be "coercive" to the technophiles who want to be Wired To The Max. What he fails to consider is the coercive nature of a society hell-bent on implementing all that is possible and profitable for those who wish to walk a different path. But I guess such "Luddites" aren't worthy of consideration.
"Civilization has run on ahead of the soul of man, and is producing faster than he can think and give thanks." -- G. K. Chesterton
I can't resist... the one question Jon Katz simply can't bear to even ponder is what if the "Luddites" are right? But no, that might shake our faith in technology too much. After all, "Whatever mischief technology creates, technology can undo." So, onward to more and more elaborate techno-fixes!
This is eerily reminiscent of the early nuclear power advocates, who dismissed concerns about nuclear waste with simple technological optimism. "Don't worry! Even if we don't know how to solve this problem now, we will in 20 years!"
Jon's faith that AI will Real Soon Now progress to the point that Clotho.org is implementable is touching, but the delivery of the AI promise has been worse than Microsoft's stragetic vaporware announcements, and is approaching the level of Zeno's paradox.
But let's grant that, in 2003 some genius will in fact create an AI system that can implement some sort of human-like, commonsense reasoning. Since Linux has achieved World Domination by then, let's even say they release Clotho.org under the GPL.
Would Clotho.org pass Clotho.org through her own filter?
l. Is this information necessary? Do we need to know it? Does it advance knowledge, inform or entertain us? Or does it tell us something we already know, provide a service when we can easily do ourselves, replicate what already exists?
Define "need to know." Do most people "need to know" the latest in AI advancements? No. Do most people "need to know" which utilities are running on their computer? No.
Clotho.org, being a filter, certainly fails to inform us. And it provides a service that we can readily replicate ourselves. So Clotho.org fails this first test.
2. Do we need this new product? Does it have unintended consequences? Will it be almost instantly out-of-date?
Detecting whether a product will have unintended consequences is more than human-level reasoning, this is a deus ex machina. Most humans have trouble with this level of reasoning. And have even more trouble reaching consensus conclusions about what the "right" answer is. If we didn't, you wouldn't want to have Clotho.org in the first place.
But putting into place widespread "reality filters" ought to be almost a "gimme" for the likelihood of unindended consequences. Clotho.org fails this test.
4. Will the people who offer this product support it? Will help be available at all times?
A cynic might note that if a product needs 24x7 support, perhaps that's an argument against it? I haven't noticed support lines for shovels and hammers lately.
Assume that help is available over the 'net, and that some company offers support. Probably even the one founded by the genius who wrote Clotho.org in the first place. So I'm certain that Clotho.org would pass herself on this test.
5. Are we leaving human beings enough time, peace, and opportunity for at least some spiritual dimension in their lives? Or are we labor-saving and information-providing them to distraction?
Again, this is (literally) a deus ex machina. Humans today have enough trouble telling their spiritual health. An AI that will be able to tell if I'm getting enough meditation and contemplation in my life? This will be quite the expert system.
Consider that part of Clotho.org's specification is
We'd be presented with a handful of news stories each morning - the most significant, the most useful, the most entertaining, based on her own vision and on recognition software that comes to understand our needs, tastes and wishes.
So, imagine starting your day with the equivalent of a/. that has only the truly fascinating stories, with no 31337 ACs and no astroturfing trolls. Now, tell me that you'd really spend more time in contemplation of the higher realities.
I think Clotho.org would have to fail herself here, as well.
Since Clotho.org would clearly fail her own filter, why don't we just save everybody the trouble and simply not build her in the first place?
But there is another strong objection which I, one of the laziest of all the children of Adam, have against the Leisure State. Those who think it could be done argue that a vast machinery using electricity, water-power, petrol, and so on, might reduce the work imposed on each of us to a minimum. It might, but it would also reduce our control to a minimum. We should ourselves become parts of a machine, even if the machine only used those parts once a week. The machine would be our master, for the machine would produce our food, and most of us could have no notion of how it was really being produced. -- G. K. Chesterton
Slashdot Mirror
Jon, Jon, if you're going to be a "free speech rulz, why can't everybody just get along" kind of guy, you really need to get over this allergy you seem to have to anything labelled "Christian" ...
If I hadn't been able to find the company page for the game, I would have guessed that this was a hoax/parody/whatever in the style of Jesux rather than a real product. But granted, somebody really is releasing a DOOM-style first person shooter game, with an "angels 'n' demons" theme.
You mean, like the recent buyout of Daimler-Benz by Chrysler? Oops, "strike that -- reverse it." :^/
Of course, I don't know if there's a UK automaker that hasn't been bought out by an American or Continental company yet ...
There's some (I should know, I spent a year indentured in a parts plant), but it's not like it used to be. I will never get used to "Jeep" being a German brand ... :^/
In the US as well -- MAP started with GM, although all of the "Big 3" eventually backed away from it. I don't know about penetration of fieldbus in US automotive -- although I've worked with it in non-automotive factories, and I think it's a neat technology. :^)
As for your gratitous slam on the fine OSI protocols, (disclaimer: my day job is OSI protocols), somebody ought to write up the victory of TCP/IP over OSI as a victory for Open Source (plus, of course, "rough consensus and running code" over comittees and "profiles"). Even though OSI's CLNP has technical advantages that are only now being brought to the Internet by IPv6, I suspect the OSI suite was doomed from the start by trying to "compete" against the freedom of both the BSD TCP/IP implementation and the RFC documents (and the fact that every OS vendor in the world started bundling TCP/IP). (And yes, I know about ISODE being free as well.)
Theodore Sturgeon, who has written some of those roses on the dunghill, was asked to comment on some critic's assertion that "90% of science fiction is crap."
His response -- "Well, sure. But 90% of everything is crap."
"90% of everything is crap" has now been enshrined as Sturgeon's Law (and well-correlated to Murphy's), but lots of folks don't know its origin in SF.
(And yes, I'm a fan of the genre, and yes, there is a lot of crap published with spaceships on the cover, and yes, too much of it reads like "swords&sorcery with lasers" ...)
While I agree that the real "meat" of the novel didn't start until about halfway through ...
If you could avoid busting a gut laughing at the Deliverator delivering pizza, I don't know what to day about your sense of humor. :^) The thing that carried me through until we got to the mythology and linguistics was that the characters were fun, the satire was on-target, and the whole thing is just screamingly funny.
Or maybe my sense of humor is just a little weird ...
Oh, absolutely. I didn't see the MTV piece, but the levels of cleverness involved seem pretty obvious based on Shamrock's and Sokal's respective explanations.
So, to hoax Social Text, it took extensive footnoting of the literature, plus a deep understanding of PoMo litspeak. To hoax MTV, it takes ... not as much, apparantly. :^)
... except on a popular culture outlet rather than on academia.
(For those who don't know, Alan Sokal is the professor who managed to get an article arguing that gravity is an arbitrary social construct accepted to a peer-reviewed journal, and promptly revealed that he had written it to see if they really would publish such a piece of obvious nonsense. The Editors Were Not Amused.)
Bravo, Jon! Well-written and on target.
My (very) limited experience agrees with this. I just got my first on-line publication this week (warning: shameless self-promotion!) at linuxplanet.com, and already I've received some very high-quality constructive criticism (thanks, Ben!) which would have greatly improved the article if I had been able to incorporate it first.
My college writing teacher always insisted that the best way to improve a piece of writing was (a) thorough, ruthless review followed by (b) several revisions. This was before the web had caught on. The internet scales these possibilites for review on a scale impractical just a few years ago.
Short answer: No.
Long answer: There are different Christian answers to the problem of force, the main two being complete pacifism and some form of "just war" reasoning. "Just war" folks tend to allow a certain amount of personal use of force as well (for example, if somebody tries to rob my house and assault my wife, I am justified in resisting them). But none of these answers really condone threatening somebody like Singer.
On the other hand, we live in a culture that celebrates violence as the "final solution" to problems. How many TV episodes and movies show that the only answer to the "bad guys" is to make sure they're all dead before the end of the episode? And then we're surprised to find that somebody who advocates killing gets a death threat? Another Christian principle is to not be suprised when you reap what you sow.
So, the fact that he's been threatened means that he's above criticism? Shall I apply the same logic to folks like the KKK and WAR (White Aryan Resistance)? After all, those folks occaisionally get threats as well, so I suppose I'd better not call their ideas monstrous. It might limit everyone's freedom.
There are a couple of holes in this reasoning:
You are not avoiding this by allowing your food supply to be provided by corporate farming.
Yeah, I note how lowered production has not yielded higher commodity prices for farmers. I also noted this year, when hog prices collapsed to worse than Depression prices, that pork wasn't any cheaper at the grocery store. What lesson exactly am I supposed to take from this?
No, they should not. The argument why is longer than I have time to go into. If you really care, I suggest you read The Unsettling of America : Culture & Agriculture by Wendell Berry, which goes into great detail about the failures of the American family farm (hint: while farmers have certainly cooperated in their own destruction, the destruction of the family farm has been deliberate corporate and government policy for decades, sad-faced politicians notwithstanding).
Why such hostility to small family farms?
Do you truly prefer depending on large megacorp semi-monopolies for your food?
This seems to me a distinction without a difference. The reason that it seems different to you, I think, is because you find Hitler's sorting of humanity into "persons" and "nonpersons" via race to be abhorrent (good for you!), but you don't find Singer's sorting by age and mental faculties so troublesome. In both cases, however, the sorting, and the declaring of "nonpersons" as killable is happening.
I'm not so sure about that.
[Rest of thought-experiment deleted]
That's the problem. There is no clear line between "pre-person" and "person". Which means that the options are (1) adopt the traditional Christian viewpoint of "personhood inheres at conception," (2) Adopt the other traditional standard of "personhood inheres at birth," or (3) adopt a standard of "personhood depends on certain qualities of X, Y, and Z" and fill in the blanks for X, Y, and Z. One good thing that I think Singer and his fellow philosophers have done is to show that (2) is an unstable position, and really degenerates into either (1) or (3) when pushed. As I have one of those "metaphysical beliefs", I fall into the (1) camp. Singer, obviously, falls into the (3) camp, and would like to focus the "debate" on values for X, Y, and Z, rather than the (1) vs. (3) decision.
Sad but true. Although it is harder for real discussion to take place when folks like Jon Katz (returning to the original topic) seem to define an articulation of the traditional Christian moral position as "screaming."
Translation: I haven't given the issue any solid thought, but it bugs me that some people are using a strong, clear word like "murder", and I'm afraid that will focus my thinking too much. Theyfore, they are practicing censorship.
Hogwash. While words are powerful, they are not that powerful. Polemics are not censorship. Else you'd be guilty of "censorship" by your vilification of Singer's critics here.
It may seem "simple-minded," but it's actually the entire point. Singer says that killing handicapped babies isn't murder. His opponents say that it is. That's the substance of the debate, and if you're not comfortable with the terminology, that's more a reflection on you than on Singer's critics.
... is that it's occaisionally necessary to discuss Hitler and the Nazis, even on the Internet.
Hitler wanted to kill Jews, saying they were less than human. Singer wants to kill handicapped kids, saying that they are less than human. Therefore, Singer's position is quite similar to the Nazis, we've just changed the definition of who is untermenschen. Hitler's policies were implemented, and mass murder resulted. Singer's policies have not yet been implemented. If they were, the results would be the same -- lots of handicapped kids would be killed. Singer would not "define" this as mass murder, but I do.
So far, nobody has shown to me that there is a logical falacy in this progression; I simply get called names for daring to note the resemblance. Oh, yes, and I'm a "censor", according to Katz, for noting the resemblance and daring to exercise my own freedom of speech.
This is why I wrote in the previous discussion that Singer is not offering any new viewpoint -- he is simply advocating a return to the old Roman practice.
But you are (ahem) reality-challenged if you believe that this is not even being discussed, as the AP news references and these very discussions on Slashdot prove.
I am well aware of that fact.
Why not? Am I supposed to have to pretend to be a secularist to participate in a public debate? That's hardly "freedom of religion."
Sorry, I'll pass on that suggestion, for a couple of reasons. One is that I think the problem of "what is a person? what defines humanity?" is irreducibly religious. Any answer will ultimately boil down to religious (or irreligious) reasons, to our beliefs about ultimate reality and meaning. To pretend otherwise is a fraud, and I think we'd get further if we just admit that this really is a religious debate. Then there might be at least the possibility of clear definitions and real working compromise.
The other reason is that I'd really rather write plainly about what I believe on this issue, rather than translate it into secular terms. I trust that people who don't share my particular religion are perfectly capable of translating into their own terms, and seeing what makes sense to them.
I cite as an example Richard Stallman, who, although an athiest, has based his Free Software philosophy squarely on the Golden Rule (a Christian teaching). Why? Because it makes sense to him. Look at the abolitionist and civil rights movements as well. Those were religious movements, which others who did not share the same religious views still joined in because the argument made compelling moral sense to them anyway.
I recommend that people who think all public discourse ought to be stripped of the religious basis of its participants go read The Culture of Disbelief : How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion by Stephen Carter.
My turn to be a touch "reactionary," as you put it ...
Who made "natural selection" God that we ought to be subject to it? Since when is "might makes right, all hail the surviving lifeforms" a moral philosophy immune to criticism? Do you truly think that is is "hubris" to believe that it's wrong for us to murder each other?
I see little evidence of "genius" on Singer's part. Oh, I'm sure his IQ is respectably above 100. But he's not really developed anything new here. At most, he's articulating the logical conclusion of a line of thought that's fairly obvious given the premises. And he certainly has a knack for publicity-generating pushing of hot buttons, but that doesn't count as "genius" in my estimation.
I don't condemn Singer for having a viewpoint that's different than mine. There are lots of folks whom I don't agree with that I can respect. But I do condemn Singer for the particular viewpoint that it's OK to kill kids if they don't measure up. Same as I (arrogantly, no doubt) would condemn other people for viewpoints that say it's OK to kill people if they're not of the Chosen Race, or that it's OK rape women, or any number of other things.
Hitler was not simply a sick man, he was an evil man. That's a distinction that tends to get lost these days.
Keep in mind that one lesson we ought to have learned from the Nazis is that concerns about "suffering" and "compassion" can go hand in hand with a willingness to see millions die. Adolf Hitler was not a drooling monster, despite his great evil. He was apparantly nice to animals and children, didn't kick the dog, was even vegetarian. Somehow, this tenderness of heart failed him when looking at the Jews, though. And Himmler had a "compassionate" reason for ordering the construction of the gas chambers, because he felt sorry for the anguish that German soldiers were feeling carrying out the orders to execute the 'human-seeming' Jews. So he found a way to automate the process, to reduce the amount of suffering in the world ...
Singer talks about reducing suffering, but the result, if his ideas are adopted, will almost certainly be the death of millions.
This is namecalling. It's a sophisticated way of saying "if you don't think like me, you're obviously not thinking."
This also assumes that we get to declare answers based upon any sort of moral tradition out of bounds, as "shackles" to be thrown off rather than foundations to be built upon. Personally, I find a moral tradition that says society does not have a right to have me or my children killed because we might not measure up to some "standard" to not be much of a shackle at all. Liberating, even.
And just to show that I have spent some thought on this, let me point out that Singer himself is not being entirely consistant here. Would he begin to eat meat or wear leather if we could assure him that the animals were killed "painlessly"? If not, then why the insistance on "painless" euthanasia for children? Why not simply throw them to the dogs, or expose them to the elements, as was done by earlier tribes? It would seem that he values bulls over babies.
What should give parents the right to decide to kill their child? Is the child property, as a dog or a goat is property? What magic criteria would have to occur before parents can no longer kill their kids? Age five days? five months? five years? Fifteen years? Passing a standardized IQ test and a physical? What is there about the parent-child relationship that gives a parent the right to kill a "useless" kid, and doesn't give an employer the right to kill a useless employee? ("Termination" would have a whole new meaning ...)
Oh, but since I think it's actually wrong to kill people, I guess I'm just incapable of "thinking" about these issues. Or perhaps simply incapable of being heard.
You know, I wouldn't worry about Dr. Singer so much if he was a lone crackpot. The trouble is (as is shown already on this Slashdot discussion) that so many people are willing to go along with this nonsense. Pope John Paul II is right to warn that we have a "Culture of Death", where our answer to problems is to simply kill. [No, I am not Catholic; however, I believe JPII is absolutely correct about this.]
This is exactly what the pro-life movement has been warning about for decades now. I can date my conversion to a pro-life viewpoint pretty exactly; it was when, as part of a "bio-ethics" class, I was exposed to the viewpoints of Joseph Fletcher, Peter Singer's predecessor in such positions as the alleged morality of infanticide. I hadn't really thought about abortion very much, but I concluded that, if there was such a consensus about the fact that there really isn't any ethical difference between a fetus and a baby, that there is no magic moral pixie dust that confers personhood and humanity by a trip out of the uterus (something Singer and Fletcher would agree with), then either we arrive at a viewpoint where, if human life is sacred at all, we must treat life in the womb as sacred, or else humans are simply animals that may be killed when they are too much trouble, and there is no logical reason not to kill unwanted children, or unhappy and unwanted old people, or anyone that enough of us feel are inconvenient.
The only reason that Singer stands out is that he boldly embraces and proclaims this logical conclusion, rather than stopping short of it. So the man is not a hypocrite. I don't consider this much of a virtue. I'd rather have a person who is hypocritical and inconsistant in refusing to follow a bad premise through to clearly evil ends, than someone who in the name of "boldness" or "consistancy" or "integrity" follows through a bad premise to consistantly evil ends.
(Side note -- I'm bothered by the subtle and not-so-subtle ad hominem attacks going on here. It seems as if, according to Dr. Shapiro, Roblimo, and the majority of Slashdotters, that by definition anyone who holds to the traditional Christian position that it's simply wrong to kill children, or anyone else, because they are "defective" by some standard is "unthinking", whereas anyone who's willing to entertain Dr. Singer's philosophy is by definition an intellectual. This is nothing more than name-calling.)
At the risk of invoking Godwin's Law, I would like to know how this differs in any essential way from Nazi philosophy. The Nazis declared that ceratin people were defective, and therefore that killing them was not an immoral act, since they weren't really "human" or "people" anyway. Singer is saying the same thing, he's simply replaced "Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and anyone who doesn't get along well with the Third Reich" with "children of any race who don't measure up phyically and mentally, or whose life might cause their parents too much suffering."
I propose a simple alternative philosophy. It's not new, but neither is Singer's. It is this: that human life is sacred. It is sacred because it is a gift of God, and we are made in His image. It is a gift, and therefore we have it by simply being born into this world. As a gift, we do not earn it by being smart enough, or fit enough, or pain-free enough. We simply have it, and to deny this is to deny legitimate human freedom and dignity.
While industrial food is neither as good or as cheap as what Mom used to cook (or that we can cook for ourselves today), we practically have this situation now:
Notice that you said food that "Mom used to make," not "food that we make". The art of cooking in the home, especially from scratch, is being lost, and we are relying more and more on restaurants and highly preprocessed quick meals.
In the restaurant arena, global chains are displacing locally-owned "mom and pop" restaurants. This is due to massive brainwashing (Sagans of $$$ spent on advertising, so that even a three year old child can recognize the various corporate logos), plus a "quality" approach that emphasizes non-variability in product. The burgers and pizza from my local "Mom's Diner" and "Pizza Oven" (I am not making these names up) are usually better than those from the Big Three [McDonald's, BK, Wendy's] and Pizza Hut. But, the delivery time is slightly longer, and a bit more variable. And, while the food at Mom's Diner depends on who's in the kitchen, a Big Mac is always a Big Mac. Most consumers are choosing the slightly lower cost and increased predictability of MegaBurgerPizza, and ignoring the globalizing/monopolizing consequences.
These global food chains are also in bed with the other major global corporations, such as the media conglomerates. For instance, we all know who the PepsiCo restaurants are now, from the Star Wars: The Phantom Menace marketing, McDonald's toys are coordinated with the latest Disney release ...
Does anyone remember the "We're Beatrice" ad campaign of years ago? The food processing industry is very similar to the automotive industry -- a few mega-corporations, with lots of supplier companies that are wholly or partly owned. The variety of labels on grocery store shelves is deceiving, because the same company will have different "product lines," and often the generic "alternative" is simply the same food without the heavily-advertized label.
As for farmers, while "save the family farm!" is occaisionally heard from the lips of politicians and celebrities, it's nearly too late. The U.S. Census Bureau has stopped counting farming as an occupation, because there aren't enough farmers left to be statistically significant. Of those who are left, the traditional "family farm" has become nearly extinct. Most farmers who are left are becoming "mega-farmers," relying on huge acreages and automation to farm as much as possible. Which leads into the next problem ...
Finally, the market for farm crops is dominated by a few huge global corporations, such as Cargill. So, farmers are buying their "inputs" from a market dominated by megacorps, and selling into a market dominated by megacorps. Even worse, in markets such as beef and pork, some of these large buyers are also the largest producers, and buy from themselves first. So, smaller meat producers only make sales when the large packing houses didn't create enough for themselves. This is one reason why, earlier this year, hog prices were lower than the cost of raising pigs, and effectively lower than Depression prices.
This is one reason farming is declining in popularity, as no sane person will do it. As my father puts it, he works a day job to support his farming habit. :^/
For anyone interested in this subject, I highly recommoned starting by reading The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture by Wendell Berry. Or anything else Berry has written. For an older, but eerily prescient perspective on why corporate monopolization is bad, and what we can start to do about it, see G. K. Chesterton, especially The Outline of Sanity
(Disclaimer: I'm more of a CLI/network driver programmer, and am new to this "Gooey" programming. I have not actually written either a GNOME or KDE app. However, this is my understanding of how the two do and don't play well together.)
First of all, it's important to realize that GNOME applications run under KDE, and KDE applications run under GNOME. So, it's not as if writing for one means that users of the other desktop can't use your program (assuming that both GNOME and KDE are installed, of course).
The GNOME and KDE teams are working out a common window management and session management specification. I suspect this is mostly relevant to people writing window managers and/or toolbar/pager applications, and not to your generic gApp or kApp program, however.
That said, it's probably not possible to write a single program that is both a GTK+ and a Qt program. The best approach would be to separate the program into a non-GUI server and a GUI-based frontend, and then you could code a GTK+/GNOME frontend and a Qt/KDE frontend (or, in the true spirit of Open Source, simply code the one you want and let a partisan from the "other side" code their favorite :^) ). Since you are guaranteed that each enviroment has a CORBA ORB, making the interface between the server and the GUI based on IDL might be smart.
Alas, Bonobo and KOM aren't really compatible object systems. Maybe in the future the teams will work out how to embed objects cross-GNOME/KDE, but don't hold your breath.
And, if only some genius would hack Glade or libglade to work with Qt, making two separate front ends wouldn't be nearly so much work. (But I'm not genius enough to do it ...)
And Apple-free, as well. Welcome to the world of free software!
As a habitual critic of some of your writing, I will hope that the end of this struggle means that you will now have more time to reflect on and think through the philosophical issues of what you are writting, rather than having to struggle with pppd. :^)
Now that you've made the conversion, it would be interesting if you could tell us about how you find Linux to work for you as a writer. What were you using to write before? What are you using now? Have you converted to the emacs religion, the vi religion, or are you using a WYSIWYG application? How did you choose? What issues are you encountering as a non-programmer writer in Linux? Do you in practice have to return to the Land of Bill for publications insisting on submissions in Word(tm) format?
(At least this should eliminate stupid flamage about Microsoft "Smart Quotes"[sic] ...)
I thought about calling this "Economists: Whores and Pimps" but thought that might draw too many 'Flamebait' moderations ... :^)
Some observations on economists and their activity in a slightly different industry than computers. These are from Wendell Berry's Home Economics:
Disclaimer: I studies just enough economics in college to learn some of the vocabulary, but not enough to get brainwashed into taking economists pronouncements seriously...
I highly recommend that you find and read The Culture of Disbelief by Stephen Carter on the attempted exclusion of faith-based views from American politics and law, and then contemplate a "freedom of religion" that actually celebrated people freely and unapologetically following their religions, or a "multi-culturalism" that didn't mind people propagating their own cultures.
Oh, please. Amphigory is obviously a Christian, and is arguing as such. So clearly he believes that the Christian view of God is the correct one. Why should he pretend otherwise?
News flash: most Christians are aware that not everybody is a Christian, and that other views of God exist. But it would be incredibly tedious to have to mention that fact every time the word "God" is used, so most of us don't.
This is not about "imposing" religious views. No one is trying to forcibly convert you to Christianity.
Oh, but you mean that his viewpoint is religiously motivated, and you disagree with him, and therefore he's trying to "impose his religious view" on you? To that I have to say, "get over it." If you disagree, do so on the real grounds that you disagree. But, if Amphigory were advocating exactly the same position, not out of Christian theology but out of some secular existentialist "I-have-chosen-this-side-in-the-debate-to-actualiz e-myself" philosophy, what would you say then? I guess you have to meet the issue face on, since you couldn't dodge behind illusions of religious persecution.
Nice to see you not imposing your irreligion on anyone.
So, if I see you getting mugged someday, I should just walk on by? After all, robbery, assault, and murder are against my religion, but you wouldn't want me to go around imposing my religious views on anybody, would you?
I thought the debate was precisely about how to accomplish just that.
Do you have any idea how condescending this sounds?
What makes you think parents don't already realize this?
Part of good parenting, IMNSHO, is the attempt to make the home a shelter, in as much as reasonably possible, from that big bad world out there. Especially for the youngest children. Right now, I don't want my children to have to deal with some of the "realities" of life (which can be pretty unreal, at times). There will be time enough for that as they mature.
This does not mean raising kids as hothouse flowers, so delicate that they faint at the first touch of the outside air. But I do believe that kids will do better if given a chance to grow strong before exposure to the harsher elements.
No. I do not want to teach them what filth is. I want to teach them what health is, and hopefully the filth will be obvious by contrast.
But I am of the belief that one doesn't have to wash in filth to recognize that it is filthy.
What about my ability as a parent to determine when it is appropriate for my children to learn about such topics?
To pick a non-Internet example, I know a lot of parents who were extremely unhappy with the media coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, because they didn't appreciate having to explain to their seven-year olds what "oral sex" was.
Maybe, maybe not. I would hope so.
But what we see does affect us. Images are highly effective at implanting themselves in our brains and affecting our attitudes and behaviours. Even if we don't buy into the message at a conscious or intellectual level. This is why advertising works, and why corporations spend billions of dollars/yen/euros every year on it.
If something wounds my kids, it's not a great consolation to know that it might not scar if we're lucky.
If my only choices are (a) keep my kids off the Internet altogether or (b) drink from the firehose of sludge trying to get the few pearls, then what do you think I'm going to need to choose?
I'd like another choice, which is why I hope that we can come up with some sort of rating system, or at least some effective netiquette, that will allow some leeway between "all" and "nothing."
What if the only refrigerators available on the markert were WebFridges? At that point, your "choice" is to (a) get a WebFridge or (b) learn why they used to be called "iceboxes."
I run into this all the time with children's toys. I would like to be able to buy simple, classic, durable toys for my kids that aren't
- cartoon ads
- V-Tech "speech enhanced"
- beschpreckled mit der blinkenlights und der bleepinklangen
- cheap plastic sh** that breaks in two days
The problem is that "the market" has decided to stock the shelves otherwise, and I'm not a skilled enough woodworker to create them myself. We have been able to find toys that we like for the kids, but it has involved much searching and extra expen$e.The Amish experience this on a much more profound scale. There are a few places like Lehman's which stock items which the Amish consider "appropriate technology," but in a number of ways, the Amish struggle to determine their own technology destiny against the overwhelming tide of the "English".
Jon Katz wrote about Clotho.org being a "non-coercive" way to restrain technology. I can only assume that he considers any attempt to say "let's decide not to pursue technology X" to be "coercive" to the technophiles who want to be Wired To The Max. What he fails to consider is the coercive nature of a society hell-bent on implementing all that is possible and profitable for those who wish to walk a different path. But I guess such "Luddites" aren't worthy of consideration.
I can't resist ... the one question Jon Katz simply can't bear to even ponder is what if the "Luddites" are right? But no, that might shake our faith in technology too much. After all, "Whatever mischief technology creates, technology can undo." So, onward to more and more elaborate techno-fixes!
This is eerily reminiscent of the early nuclear power advocates, who dismissed concerns about nuclear waste with simple technological optimism. "Don't worry! Even if we don't know how to solve this problem now, we will in 20 years!"
Jon's faith that AI will Real Soon Now progress to the point that Clotho.org is implementable is touching, but the delivery of the AI promise has been worse than Microsoft's stragetic vaporware announcements, and is approaching the level of Zeno's paradox.
But let's grant that, in 2003 some genius will in fact create an AI system that can implement some sort of human-like, commonsense reasoning. Since Linux has achieved World Domination by then, let's even say they release Clotho.org under the GPL.
Would Clotho.org pass Clotho.org through her own filter?
l. Is this information necessary? Do we need to know it? Does it advance knowledge, inform or entertain us? Or does it tell us something we already know, provide a service when we can easily do ourselves, replicate what already exists?
Define "need to know." Do most people "need to know" the latest in AI advancements? No. Do most people "need to know" which utilities are running on their computer? No.
Clotho.org, being a filter, certainly fails to inform us. And it provides a service that we can readily replicate ourselves. So Clotho.org fails this first test.
2. Do we need this new product? Does it have unintended consequences? Will it be almost instantly out-of-date?
Detecting whether a product will have unintended consequences is more than human-level reasoning, this is a deus ex machina. Most humans have trouble with this level of reasoning. And have even more trouble reaching consensus conclusions about what the "right" answer is. If we didn't, you wouldn't want to have Clotho.org in the first place.
But putting into place widespread "reality filters" ought to be almost a "gimme" for the likelihood of unindended consequences. Clotho.org fails this test.
4. Will the people who offer this product support it? Will help be available at all times?
A cynic might note that if a product needs 24x7 support, perhaps that's an argument against it? I haven't noticed support lines for shovels and hammers lately.
Assume that help is available over the 'net, and that some company offers support. Probably even the one founded by the genius who wrote Clotho.org in the first place. So I'm certain that Clotho.org would pass herself on this test.
5. Are we leaving human beings enough time, peace, and opportunity for at least some spiritual dimension in their lives? Or are we labor-saving and information-providing them to distraction?
Again, this is (literally) a deus ex machina. Humans today have enough trouble telling their spiritual health. An AI that will be able to tell if I'm getting enough meditation and contemplation in my life? This will be quite the expert system.
Consider that part of Clotho.org's specification is
So, imagine starting your day with the equivalent of aI think Clotho.org would have to fail herself here, as well.
Since Clotho.org would clearly fail her own filter, why don't we just save everybody the trouble and simply not build her in the first place?