Have you considered the possibility that scientists are ignoring science to favor undue burdening of businesses?
Analogy alert: I will gladly take counsel from a fire marshall about how to make my home safe, but a fire marshall is the last person I would want to actually make policy in my home because I want to live my day-to-day life there.
Environmental scientists, like almost all specialists, see things very narrowly, and many place disproportionate importance on the unnatural preservation of some ideal, imagined, "human-free" ecosystem. People need to work; people need to eat. Sometimes commerce should trump the conclusions of "science."
I remember hearing one dadaist piece like you described but with a man saying "scrrrrooop-a-PING, SCROOOOOOOOP-a.... PING, scrooop........ a ping, scroooooooooooooooop-a-PING...." for about five minutes straight.
It says something about how provincial the IT world has become when someone says "the best thing about multi-processor systems past two or four is really the ability to run virtualized servers with two or four dedicated CPUs each inside an uber-CPU'd system."
There's a reason you pay so much more per CPU for an SMP or NUMA system, and it ain't for network services.
It's not at all that we can't comprehend that you do have similar values and morals, it's that you are being intellectually dishonest if you think that your values and morals can be derived without assumptions that are moral in themselves.
There is a leap from the indicative "Other people are conscious and fundamentally the same as me" to the imperative "and therefore I should treat them as I wish to be treated." As long as you allow empirical evidence and rational analysis to be your only tools, you will never make the leap from the indicative to the imperative. It requires appending some sort of moral axiom to your worldview to allow the valuation of others, to accept as a "good" thing the propagation of humanity into the future beyond our deaths, etc. If you admit that you hold some such moral axiom as being "True Even If You Can't Prove It" (to get us back on topic), then I have no problem accepting that you can hold moral values which are prima facie commensurate with those produced by Christian orthodoxy.
There are common beliefs among, for example the Objectivists that the imperative can be derived from selfishness, and strict materialists like Dawkins that the fact that we observe anyone holding a moral imperative is merely indicative in itself. I don't think that an individual holding either of those views in itself poses a threat to society or civilization, because they still tend to live parasitically on the ethics of a society founded on the idea of non-deduced moral imperatives. The problem comes when society itself, or a great enough number of its members hold these views. It's true we do have the inertia of our heritage holding us on course for now, but without any external guidance we most certainly will drift into a debased state. Read The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis for a scenario of how dropping the moral imperative puts us on a fast track to "well meaning" totalitarianism.
Because there are substantial negative consequences to behaving in a way that ignores other people's value.
But if we do put morals (or more properly ethics) derived from the metaphysical equality you noted aside, there are also substantial positive consequences to valuing yourself above others. You don't have to look far to see that many people take advantage of that fact out of genuine rational self-interest. (even to the detriment of their metaphysical, if not moral, equals)
I like my freedom, and running people down at stoplights causes uniformed people in cars with flashing lights to lock me up, limiting my freedom.
You are presupposing that the extent of devaluing others for personal gain:
crosses into illegality, and
always results in getting caught.
Neither of these is strictly true and a rational risk assessment without considering others to be morally equal can still result in profoundly selfish and/or antisocial behavior. I still don't see how your initial line of reasoning can result in the ethical position you hold. And while you may personally be "genetically wired" to treat others with respect, surely you'll admit to having come across some people who aren't. What of them? Do they get to indulge their genetically wired preferences too?
Slashdot Mirror
Which one?
Seriously, why would anyone think this stuff is in danger? As if SBC wouldn't see it as an asset, part of their "goodwill" portfolio.
Analogy alert: I will gladly take counsel from a fire marshall about how to make my home safe, but a fire marshall is the last person I would want to actually make policy in my home because I want to live my day-to-day life there.
Environmental scientists, like almost all specialists, see things very narrowly, and many place disproportionate importance on the unnatural preservation of some ideal, imagined, "human-free" ecosystem. People need to work; people need to eat. Sometimes commerce should trump the conclusions of "science."
Uh, user # > 800k?
You've heard it all, I suppose.
Bach they were not.
Sounds like the future is moving forwards, but you wish it would stay put so we can catch up.
You dont think so, most of the country voted for bush for god sakes!
And almost half think that simply stating that fact somehow supports their argument.
Heck, while you're at it, why not be 700% more productive than them?
This truly is the best of all possible worlds.
So they drive like they're stoned?
It's on a web page, so you know it's true.
Thanks for the link. This is progress?
OK, the iPippin, then. How's that?
History is nothing more than the recounting of wars, and it is written by the victors.
In Korea, only old people say, "what if it was Microsoft."
There's a reason you pay so much more per CPU for an SMP or NUMA system, and it ain't for network services.
I thought dancing robots were Japanese culture.
Well, it's a legitimate word in German.
Sounds interesting. Let me try:
<insert finger in throat>
HUGRHGAAGH
</insert finger in throat>
Dang. Another Ubuntu.
And his kids know never to touch the black one.
And ever since then, they've really begun to nail that demographic.
There is a leap from the indicative "Other people are conscious and fundamentally the same as me" to the imperative "and therefore I should treat them as I wish to be treated." As long as you allow empirical evidence and rational analysis to be your only tools, you will never make the leap from the indicative to the imperative. It requires appending some sort of moral axiom to your worldview to allow the valuation of others, to accept as a "good" thing the propagation of humanity into the future beyond our deaths, etc. If you admit that you hold some such moral axiom as being "True Even If You Can't Prove It" (to get us back on topic), then I have no problem accepting that you can hold moral values which are prima facie commensurate with those produced by Christian orthodoxy.
There are common beliefs among, for example the Objectivists that the imperative can be derived from selfishness, and strict materialists like Dawkins that the fact that we observe anyone holding a moral imperative is merely indicative in itself. I don't think that an individual holding either of those views in itself poses a threat to society or civilization, because they still tend to live parasitically on the ethics of a society founded on the idea of non-deduced moral imperatives. The problem comes when society itself, or a great enough number of its members hold these views. It's true we do have the inertia of our heritage holding us on course for now, but without any external guidance we most certainly will drift into a debased state. Read The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis for a scenario of how dropping the moral imperative puts us on a fast track to "well meaning" totalitarianism.
But if we do put morals (or more properly ethics) derived from the metaphysical equality you noted aside, there are also substantial positive consequences to valuing yourself above others. You don't have to look far to see that many people take advantage of that fact out of genuine rational self-interest. (even to the detriment of their metaphysical, if not moral, equals)
I like my freedom, and running people down at stoplights causes uniformed people in cars with flashing lights to lock me up, limiting my freedom.
You are presupposing that the extent of devaluing others for personal gain:
- crosses into illegality, and
- always results in getting caught.
Neither of these is strictly true and a rational risk assessment without considering others to be morally equal can still result in profoundly selfish and/or antisocial behavior. I still don't see how your initial line of reasoning can result in the ethical position you hold. And while you may personally be "genetically wired" to treat others with respect, surely you'll admit to having come across some people who aren't. What of them? Do they get to indulge their genetically wired preferences too?