This becomes increasingly rare as the material becomes increasingly advanced;
That depends on whether the information is available and is quality. Even if it is as rare as you say, the information should still be available to these people.
At a sufficiently advanced level, I would say that statement covers just about everyone, with the only exceptions being prodigies like Ramanujan (who are outliers even among very intelligent people).
Well, I disagree. It's certainly more than an elite few, but I understand they're a minority. We're talking about them and only them. I believe they should at least have access to the information so that they can learn in ways that suit them best.
for example, they may understand the basic idea behind RSA, but rarely do they understand Blum-Blum-Shub or its security proof, even after reading a lot about it.
If the information is there...
I will admit that there is a possible alternative explanation, which is that these same people may have difficulty getting access to material that is readily available to a university student, particularly journal access.
There are a few instances of advanced topics not being available. This is what I think needs to be corrected.
Some fields are sufficiently difficult that being "self taught" would either require someone with an exceptional intellect, or an unreasonable amount of time.
You're going to use an unreasonable amount of time either way. Notice the word "capable."
I would say this is particularly true of abstract math e.g. topology, abstract algebra, etc.
It depends on whether there's enough information about it and if you're intelligent enough to grasp it on your own. Otherwise, self teaching in that subjects obviously isn't a good idea.
but I would be surprised if all but an extreme minority of people could really understand what they are doing in those fields without some sort of formal education.
It's not really a surprise if a vast amount of quality information (notice the word quality) is there. I don't think it's just an "extreme minority," but certainly less than the amount of people who require being taught.
Teaching yourself is fine, but very few people are capable of doing it properly without a lot of help.
We're naturally talking about people who are capable of doing so.
Sure when it comes to something like programming you can learn on your own.
Actually, you can teach yourself about any subject that has a vast amount of information written about it, provided you're 'capable' of teaching yourself at all.
What you're generally paying for with tuition is guidance and an assurance to future employers that you know what you're doing or more accurately that you've at least seen the materials.
There's no 'assurance' to future employers. People with degrees aren't necessarily any better than anyone else. Though, you mentioned that yourself.
The internet isn't really a place to gain an informed opinion over things.
It is if lots of quality information is there.
There's a lot of noise and very little quality signal to use and without having a degree to start with it's pretty much futile in terms of knowing what is and is not reliable information.
Perhaps for some subjects, but it's certainly not true for many of them. I've seen lots of quality information about varying subjects available on the internet. As for knowing if it's quality information or not, you could merely, you know, double check to make sure.
It's better than banning the games altogether, but it's just the fact that even though they found absolutely no evidence that video games lead to violence, they're still using the "protect the children" excuse. Protect them from what? Do you have any evidence that we need to protect them from video games? Oh, that's right, no. If someone was so seriously affected by violent media that they'd go out and kill/hurt someone because of it, chances are they're killers in the first place. Even children know the difference between fiction and reality. If they don't, there's a simple cure: the parents can merely tell them that it isn't real. They don't need to be protected from fictional works, not even their parents need to do that. It's completely pointless.
If you don't find evidence for something, just assume that it's true/false (depending on your beliefs) and ban/censor it for just about everyone even though you found no evidence that it's bad!
It's not really the same thing than conscious will to live through understanding at least something about life and death.
Yet they still don't want to die. Neither do humans.
They're not a useful guideline for deciding what's ethical and what's not.
They sort of are if the thing doesn't want to die.
It doesn't make it unethical to give injections to small children who can't understand the issue and just don't want a needle to be stuck into their flesh.
There's an actual purpose in that, just like there's an actual purpose in eating other living beings (survival, human or not). Saying that instincts don't count (or that they only have instincts) isn't a very good argument, though.
If they agreed to it (without being deceived), then I guess I'd have to agree with it.
How do you know the animals would agree to it if we could communicate with them? Just because they can't understand doesn't mean they want to be killed.
What? By going into the restaurant, you know that you will use up the time of one or more workers. This is done directly. Yes, you should tip because you've wasted their time and you (presumably) knew that by entering the restaurant you would have to pay a tip because you'd waste their time.
As I said, pirates don't even interact with the artists in the least. Not at all.
Pirates don't use up the authors' time (development time may have been used, but that is not the fault of the pirate), money (they never had the potential profit at all), or resources.
I personally find eating ethically raised animals just fine morally.
Just a simple question: would you find this okay if it were done to humans who were bred solely for this purpose, as long as they were treated nicely before they were slaughtered (just assume that eating humans is healthy in this example).
Thats my point, it might be ultimately true, but it is completely useless.
The only reason I stated it in the first place was in response to one of your comments. It's not useless in the context of animal rights because it basically states that all things are equal in the first place (so people can't claim that humans have some sort of natural importance over everything else). But, whatever.
This is pretty much obvious, but there are probably much more... interesting... reminders that you are pretty much completely fallible.
I hardly think that thinking "Oh dear everything is meaningless" is useful.
It doesn't matter if you think that it's useful or not. My point was that ultimately everything has the same value, nothing more. If you like life or think you're more important than something, that's nice, but your level of perceived importance isn't a fact.
It isn't even good for thinking rationally
Except that it makes sense.
You can't live by that.
Yes, you can. It's fairly easy to just accept that your opinion isn't absolute fact.
We are talking about what level of rights to prescribe to other things, so saying "everything is meaningless" doesn't really add to the discussion.
I originally responded to a single thing that you said:
Animals are not little people.
I wasn't sure what you meant by that, so I just wanted to see if you felt that humans had some sort of ultimate importance. I never mentioned anything about animal rights or anything like it.
And ultimately we HAVE TO assign level of importance to things
That's nice, but all I'm saying is that this perceived importance isn't fact. That's all.
it's not a physical work analogy, the waiter has to get you the food weather you tip or not.
You went into the restaurant and therefore directly used up the time of its employees that they could have used on other customers. The pirate never directly interacts with the artist. Not once. The artist loses absolutely nothing that they already had.
Yes, less money hurts your business, not the same amount of money. I pirate something, and you're left with the exact same amount of money that you had to begin with, which means you were unaffected. If you're left exactly the same, you haven't been harmed.
If 'loss' of potential future gain can equate to harm (it can't, but this is just an example), then that means that a consumer choosing not to buy something is harming a business by that logic.
i guess you don't tip because it doesn't harm the waiter?
I'm very, very tired of these physical work analogies. Please think before using them. What are you using up by having someone employ a service for you directly? Time. Time is not in an infinite quantity. Pirates don't use up the authors time (development time may have been used, but that is not the fault of the pirate), money (they never had potential profit at all), or resources.
Ignoring the presence of some metaphysical super-being who gives everything meaning, pretty much nothing could be said to be important depending on the scale your looking at.
That's my point. Nothing has some artificial level of importance assigned to it.
Instead of important, I would claim that everything is universally insignificant.
This is exactly what I'm claiming.
I'm not going to go arguing that that single atom of cesium over there (I can see you lurking in the corner, scheming) is my equal
You don't have to, but just known that your opinion isn't fact. There is no factual level of important to your life or anything else's life. At this point, it's all opinion.
If Lassie is as meaningless as me, then who really cares what happens to her?
As far as I know, I never once mentioned anything about personal opinion.
I don't find this as a good ground work for generating a system of much of anything.
I find it as a good ground work for thinking logically and not having some arbitrary importance assigned to you where none exists. Our lives matter to us, not the universe. They ultimately hold no meaning, even if we believe otherwise.
Yeah, but there's still plenty of wasted space being used by people who absolutely insist on burying bodies. What's the point?
If you need a gravestone to remember them, chances are you don't actually care about them. Other people won't remember a name on some random tombstone. You also don't need a tombstone to 'honor' the dead. You can 'honor' them in memory. It's just such a waste.
Usually they're considered opinions with justifications and reasons
Not if the subject is entirely opinion based, such as likes or dislikes. Well, I suppose there are reasons, but those reasons aren't necessarily valid to someone else. I don't believe that absolute morals exist because there's no reason to think they do exist. How does someone else's moral code somehow have more weight than mine? Society may think its moral code does, but in reality it's just a massively held moral code and nothing more. A simple reason, but there it is.
No, no. It is falling on deaf ears because if you happen to hold an opinion that differs from a moderator, you're either offtopic, overrated, redundant, or a troll!
I'm not sure what you mean by "factually" in that statement.
As in, in terms of universal importance, they are likely not less important than us. You can hold the opinion that you're more important, but it's not an established fact, no matter what toys humans build or how intelligent they are. Everything dies in the end, and our accomplishments here are almost meaningless from what I can see, even if we ourselves hold value in them.
From the most basic level, they are not us, and we naturally hold ourselves above everything else
I don't. It seems kind of pointless, but it is your opinion.
But I can accept the thought that they are pretty much our inferiors.
Again, that isn't a fact. What I mean by that is our universal importance. If we vanished, it wouldn't matter. We aren't naturally 'better' (as in, our lives are somehow worth more than everything else for no reason) than anything else, it is just a majorities opinion that we are. That's all I meant.
Slashdot Mirror
This becomes increasingly rare as the material becomes increasingly advanced;
That depends on whether the information is available and is quality. Even if it is as rare as you say, the information should still be available to these people.
At a sufficiently advanced level, I would say that statement covers just about everyone, with the only exceptions being prodigies like Ramanujan (who are outliers even among very intelligent people).
Well, I disagree. It's certainly more than an elite few, but I understand they're a minority. We're talking about them and only them. I believe they should at least have access to the information so that they can learn in ways that suit them best.
for example, they may understand the basic idea behind RSA, but rarely do they understand Blum-Blum-Shub or its security proof, even after reading a lot about it.
If the information is there...
I will admit that there is a possible alternative explanation, which is that these same people may have difficulty getting access to material that is readily available to a university student, particularly journal access.
There are a few instances of advanced topics not being available. This is what I think needs to be corrected.
Some fields are sufficiently difficult that being "self taught" would either require someone with an exceptional intellect, or an unreasonable amount of time.
You're going to use an unreasonable amount of time either way. Notice the word "capable."
I would say this is particularly true of abstract math e.g. topology, abstract algebra, etc.
It depends on whether there's enough information about it and if you're intelligent enough to grasp it on your own. Otherwise, self teaching in that subjects obviously isn't a good idea.
but I would be surprised if all but an extreme minority of people could really understand what they are doing in those fields without some sort of formal education.
It's not really a surprise if a vast amount of quality information (notice the word quality) is there. I don't think it's just an "extreme minority," but certainly less than the amount of people who require being taught.
but does not actually go into as much depth as you might think.
Without knowing where someone learned the information or how they learned it, how could you possibly know this?
but they generally do not have deeper insights into the theory behind what they are doing.
Some people merely aren't capable of teaching themselves and may require help.
Teaching yourself is fine, but very few people are capable of doing it properly without a lot of help.
We're naturally talking about people who are capable of doing so.
Sure when it comes to something like programming you can learn on your own.
Actually, you can teach yourself about any subject that has a vast amount of information written about it, provided you're 'capable' of teaching yourself at all.
What you're generally paying for with tuition is guidance and an assurance to future employers that you know what you're doing or more accurately that you've at least seen the materials.
There's no 'assurance' to future employers. People with degrees aren't necessarily any better than anyone else. Though, you mentioned that yourself.
The internet isn't really a place to gain an informed opinion over things.
It is if lots of quality information is there.
There's a lot of noise and very little quality signal to use and without having a degree to start with it's pretty much futile in terms of knowing what is and is not reliable information.
Perhaps for some subjects, but it's certainly not true for many of them. I've seen lots of quality information about varying subjects available on the internet. As for knowing if it's quality information or not, you could merely, you know, double check to make sure.
It's better than banning the games altogether, but it's just the fact that even though they found absolutely no evidence that video games lead to violence, they're still using the "protect the children" excuse. Protect them from what? Do you have any evidence that we need to protect them from video games? Oh, that's right, no. If someone was so seriously affected by violent media that they'd go out and kill/hurt someone because of it, chances are they're killers in the first place. Even children know the difference between fiction and reality. If they don't, there's a simple cure: the parents can merely tell them that it isn't real. They don't need to be protected from fictional works, not even their parents need to do that. It's completely pointless.
If you don't find evidence for something, just assume that it's true/false (depending on your beliefs) and ban/censor it for just about everyone even though you found no evidence that it's bad!
Maybe, but it's only getting worse.
It's not really the same thing than conscious will to live through understanding at least something about life and death.
Yet they still don't want to die. Neither do humans.
They're not a useful guideline for deciding what's ethical and what's not.
They sort of are if the thing doesn't want to die.
It doesn't make it unethical to give injections to small children who can't understand the issue and just don't want a needle to be stuck into their flesh.
There's an actual purpose in that, just like there's an actual purpose in eating other living beings (survival, human or not). Saying that instincts don't count (or that they only have instincts) isn't a very good argument, though.
If they agreed to it (without being deceived), then I guess I'd have to agree with it.
How do you know the animals would agree to it if we could communicate with them? Just because they can't understand doesn't mean they want to be killed.
What? By going into the restaurant, you know that you will use up the time of one or more workers. This is done directly. Yes, you should tip because you've wasted their time and you (presumably) knew that by entering the restaurant you would have to pay a tip because you'd waste their time.
As I said, pirates don't even interact with the artists in the least. Not at all.
Pirates don't use up the authors' time (development time may have been used, but that is not the fault of the pirate), money (they never had the potential profit at all), or resources.
I personally find eating ethically raised animals just fine morally.
Just a simple question: would you find this okay if it were done to humans who were bred solely for this purpose, as long as they were treated nicely before they were slaughtered (just assume that eating humans is healthy in this example).
Thats my point, it might be ultimately true, but it is completely useless.
The only reason I stated it in the first place was in response to one of your comments. It's not useless in the context of animal rights because it basically states that all things are equal in the first place (so people can't claim that humans have some sort of natural importance over everything else). But, whatever.
This is pretty much obvious, but there are probably much more... interesting... reminders that you are pretty much completely fallible.
Huh?
I hardly think that thinking "Oh dear everything is meaningless" is useful.
It doesn't matter if you think that it's useful or not. My point was that ultimately everything has the same value, nothing more. If you like life or think you're more important than something, that's nice, but your level of perceived importance isn't a fact.
It isn't even good for thinking rationally
Except that it makes sense.
You can't live by that.
Yes, you can. It's fairly easy to just accept that your opinion isn't absolute fact.
We are talking about what level of rights to prescribe to other things, so saying "everything is meaningless" doesn't really add to the discussion.
I originally responded to a single thing that you said:
Animals are not little people.
I wasn't sure what you meant by that, so I just wanted to see if you felt that humans had some sort of ultimate importance. I never mentioned anything about animal rights or anything like it.
And ultimately we HAVE TO assign level of importance to things
That's nice, but all I'm saying is that this perceived importance isn't fact. That's all.
it's not a physical work analogy, the waiter has to get you the food weather you tip or not.
You went into the restaurant and therefore directly used up the time of its employees that they could have used on other customers. The pirate never directly interacts with the artist. Not once. The artist loses absolutely nothing that they already had.
Less money hurts your business.
Yes, less money hurts your business, not the same amount of money. I pirate something, and you're left with the exact same amount of money that you had to begin with, which means you were unaffected. If you're left exactly the same, you haven't been harmed.
If 'loss' of potential future gain can equate to harm (it can't, but this is just an example), then that means that a consumer choosing not to buy something is harming a business by that logic.
i guess you don't tip because it doesn't harm the waiter?
I'm very, very tired of these physical work analogies. Please think before using them. What are you using up by having someone employ a service for you directly? Time. Time is not in an infinite quantity. Pirates don't use up the authors time (development time may have been used, but that is not the fault of the pirate), money (they never had potential profit at all), or resources.
Ignoring the presence of some metaphysical super-being who gives everything meaning, pretty much nothing could be said to be important depending on the scale your looking at.
That's my point. Nothing has some artificial level of importance assigned to it.
Instead of important, I would claim that everything is universally insignificant.
This is exactly what I'm claiming.
I'm not going to go arguing that that single atom of cesium over there (I can see you lurking in the corner, scheming) is my equal
You don't have to, but just known that your opinion isn't fact. There is no factual level of important to your life or anything else's life. At this point, it's all opinion.
If Lassie is as meaningless as me, then who really cares what happens to her?
As far as I know, I never once mentioned anything about personal opinion.
I don't find this as a good ground work for generating a system of much of anything.
I find it as a good ground work for thinking logically and not having some arbitrary importance assigned to you where none exists. Our lives matter to us, not the universe. They ultimately hold no meaning, even if we believe otherwise.
some we would consider good reasons
I can't think of any right now. As for me, donating it to science/organ donation would be good.
if you don't tell us what your reasons are and refuse to detail any aspect of them
I never really refused. However, I did just go into detail about them.
Yeah, but there's still plenty of wasted space being used by people who absolutely insist on burying bodies. What's the point?
If you need a gravestone to remember them, chances are you don't actually care about them. Other people won't remember a name on some random tombstone. You also don't need a tombstone to 'honor' the dead. You can 'honor' them in memory. It's just such a waste.
If only more people would do the above...
Usually they're considered opinions with justifications and reasons
Not if the subject is entirely opinion based, such as likes or dislikes. Well, I suppose there are reasons, but those reasons aren't necessarily valid to someone else. I don't believe that absolute morals exist because there's no reason to think they do exist. How does someone else's moral code somehow have more weight than mine? Society may think its moral code does, but in reality it's just a massively held moral code and nothing more. A simple reason, but there it is.
No, no. It is falling on deaf ears because if you happen to hold an opinion that differs from a moderator, you're either offtopic, overrated, redundant, or a troll!
Everything you said appears to be in line with my way of thinking.
If the earth vanished, it also wouldn't "matter" to the universe. The only ones it would matter to would be us.
You're right. It wouldn't matter at all. Ultimately, it's a matter of opinion, and worth ultimate worth can't be defined as fact.
I'm not sure what you mean by "factually" in that statement.
As in, in terms of universal importance, they are likely not less important than us. You can hold the opinion that you're more important, but it's not an established fact, no matter what toys humans build or how intelligent they are. Everything dies in the end, and our accomplishments here are almost meaningless from what I can see, even if we ourselves hold value in them.
From the most basic level, they are not us, and we naturally hold ourselves above everything else
I don't. It seems kind of pointless, but it is your opinion.
But I can accept the thought that they are pretty much our inferiors.
Again, that isn't a fact. What I mean by that is our universal importance. If we vanished, it wouldn't matter. We aren't naturally 'better' (as in, our lives are somehow worth more than everything else for no reason) than anything else, it is just a majorities opinion that we are. That's all I meant.