What the hell are you saying? Reading Comprehension 101 my friend. Where did I argue against free speech? What I was reponding to was the post that claimed that laws were not enacted on moral principles but to ensure the survival of society. I think it's obvious that we should have laws against slavery as well as laws protecting free speech. I also think it's obvious that these laws are not enacted because societies depend on them to survive but because those societies believe that those laws are morally right.
You've created a false distinction between political and moral decisions. Obviously, any law enacted by a political body is by definition a political decision, however that doesn't preclude it from being based on moral prinicples and hence a moral decision also. The decision to enact anti-slavery laws was made because enough people found slavery to be morally objectionable.
Your argument only makes sense if you completely ignore the meaning of the word morality. You seem to think that if a concept involves self interest then it is not a moral concept. Where do you think moral concepts evolved from? Morality is the extension of self interest to society as a whole. It is the embodiment of "our collective wish to not be killed, raped, ect." You say: "You don't want to be held against your will, neither do I so we ban slavery." But that's not really true. None of the abolitionists were in danger of become slaves themselves, they were extending their own self interest to others. Your first post argues that laws are passed based solely on pragmatic factors (survival of society, etc.), but slavery was not only not a threat to the survival of society, but it was pragmatically beneficial. Robert Fogel won a Nobel Prize in the 70s for an economic study showing that slave holding states in the US were about 10% more productive than free states. The only reason to ban slavery was that people empathetically extended their own self interest to the slaves and decided that slavery was morally wrong. I honestly don't see how you can admit that slavery is a moral issue yet still argue that anti-slavery laws are not based on morality.
That is patently ridiculous. Plenty of societies survived and thrived with slavery, so should we not have laws against slavery? Or child labor, or universal suffrage, etc.
Insightful? Only if you choose to ignore both history and economics. Corporate mergers were practically invented in the 60s, a decade in which corporations, flush with massive amounts of federal spending, decided that adding value by acquisition was less risky and therefore preferable to adding value by innovation. It gave rise to unwieldy behemoths like GM and ITT and added the term "conglomerate" to the economic lexicon. In fact, you can make a case that the 60s laid the foundation for all of the LBOs and divestitures of the 80s as the inefficiencies of size caught up with some of these corporations and they were bought up cheaply then broken up into parts that were individually more valuable than the whole. Not a very pretty legacy.
In contrast, the 90s saw economic growth that surpassed the 60s by pretty much any economic metric you care to name. And this growth was fueled largely by new companies, new markets, and real increases in productivity.
Oh, and no one in the modern era has ever used a 10 or 20 year horizon for all but the vaguest, most trite, planning (i.e. "Mission Statement"). Not only that but, at least in the US (which is what 2001 and, I presume you, are referring to), companies were notorious in the 60s for having extremely short-sighted strategies. For more information, see any of the scores of treatises published in the 70s and 80s on how to rectify this short-sightedness by emulating the Japanese.
In SQL Server 2000, it is not the default setting. During installation you have to either enter a password or explicitly check a box that says "I want a blank sa password"
Rather they will often superfically lower their price below profitability to get everybody in the region to buy from them. Then once they have driven their local competition to bankrupcy, they can raise prices and start charging more. If a new competitior opens up in town they can just restart the process.
So you admit that the whole cycle works by offering goods at lower prices, I don't see the problem there.
No, it places individual choice above top down control. Profit and commerce are ultimately results of individual consumer choice. McDonalds doesn't force burgers on people at gunpoint.
Your conclusion about heroin, however, is correct, which is why the war on drugs is immoral.
the article is also largely about privacy and security.
Unfortunately, it has nothing new or interesting to say on either one of those topics; that's why it's a political piece. Its primary purpose is to communicate the author's negative opinion of a competitor's product, not to explain or explore privacy and security issues.
Re:doing the same to other movies?
on
Review: Zoolander
·
· Score: 1
I don't know. I see your point, but the fact is that the towers are not there anymore. It seems like it would be anachronistic for any movie that wasn't spefically set in pre-9/11/01 NY to show them, an anachronism that would draw way too much attention to itself at the expense of the rest of the movie. (Note: I haven't seen Zoolander, so I don't know if it specifically places itself in pre-9/11 time. I just assume that it is implied to be present day.)
Well, by that logic, why did they forget to leave out all the parts about free speech, equality of all humans, and all the other stuff that got amended upon the 'moral absolutes' of the Constitution?
Sorry, no disrespect intended, but I can't even parse that sentence. What did they "forget to leave out?" In any case the Declaration of Rights predates the constitution. The amendments comprising the Bill of Rights were left out of the original constitution because at the time the attitude of the framers was that they were unnecessary because any power not explicitly granted the federal government would reside with the people. During the long debates over ratification the Anti-Federalists took the position that basic rights (there's that absolutism for you) were too important to leave out and "rest on inference." (Jefferson, from memory so probably misquoted a little). Long story short, there was compromise to get the constituion ratified with the promise that the first congress would take up the bill of rights proposal.
If morals, and good/evil are such an absolute, why are we debating it?
We're not. You're debating it. I'm not trying to convince you one way or the other about moral relativism. If you'll notice I haven't claimed that morality is either absolute or relative. All I did was point out what I saw as the irony in the following facts:
1. The founding fathers believed in absolute morality and based the US constitution and bill of rights on this belief. If you disagree with this then we're done and all I can say is go read some Locke and/or Blackstone.
2. The slashdot posting community is heavily in favor of individual human rights (privacy, free speech, et al) and often references or quotes the founding fathers and the constitution in defense of said rights.
3. Given (1) and (2), one would reasonably expect most slashdot posters to support the idea of absolute morality since it is the concept that underpins their cherished ideals as expressed in (2) and originally set forth in (1).
Here comes the irony, wait for it....
4. Instead, most posters (and moderators by the looks of it) that addressed the topic came out on the side of moral relativism. In addition, some of the posts suggested that absolute morality was the sole province of religious dogmatics while no one acknowledged that some of its most eloquent and effective proponents were men of the Enlightenment.
All in all, this is a much too long-winded defense of my original statement which was simply poking fun at what I saw as contradictory behavior. Serves me right for trying to extrapolate consistency from the myriad of individuals that make up Slashdot. Moral of the story: You should never generalize. Ever.
I would tell them that. Don't forget that quite a few of your Founding Fathers were slave-owners who thought that only white male land-owners over the age of 21 should be allowed to vote. Ooops.
I haven't forgotten, I just don't see the relevance. All you've shown is that some (most/all) of the founding fathers were hypocritical. So what? That doesn't speak one way or the other about the concept of moral relativism. Also, a little further reading will show that at least a few of them were quite aware of their hypocrisy and went to some pains to rationalize it. Again, so what? The point is that they believed in moral absolutes and codified those absolutes in the US constitution and bill of rights.
Surely you see the irony of slashdotters, so quick to cite the constitution in defense of individual rights, denouncing the moral absolutism on which it is based as the sole province of religious zealots?
Tell that to the founding fathers. I find it ironic that, in this forum where everyone is quick to quote Jefferson and Franklin in defense of their rights, so many come to the defense of moral relativism. The entire bill of rights is based on "self-evident" truths laid out by Jeffeson in the DofI.
Well, at least you researched, but you didn't look closely enough. It's not like the US has been giving cash to the Taliban. The $43 million in May consisted almost entirely of wheat and was distributed by the UN and NGOs, not the Taliban.
I agree that AF1 is obviously a very different and more difficult target than the WTC. My point is just that an attack that would have been considered unthinkable had just taken place. It just seems like prudent and effective security policy for the military/secret service to act as if AF1 was a target until things were secured. Anyway, here is a link to a NYT article with the most info I've sen on the possible threat.
Sure, and how could terrorists destroy the WTC and damage the Pentagon?
The US was under direct attack and long standing procedures designed to keep the president alive and in communication with the armed forces were put into effect. I wouldn't have expected anything less. Imagine if he had flown back to DC and something had happened to him? I can jsut imagine all of the armchair experts here on slashdot decrying the "stupidity" of Bush and the secret service.
In what kind of bizarro world is this 'insightful'?
No genius, the guiding principle behind rule of law is not "if enough people want to do it then it must be ok", no matter what Mr. Crowley said. Laws have nothing to do with "the will of the people"
Every society since Hammurabi has has a code of laws, and not one in ten of those societies would have known what "will of the people" meant, much less wanted to enforce it. Laws are intended to prevent individuals acting in their own self interest from unfairly harming others or society as a whole.
Hey, I've got an idea: I'd really like a blow job from Jennifer Lopez, and I bet there's lots of guys out there that want the same thing. If I could just get enough signatures together, maybe I could convince Congress that the will of the people has spoken and they will pass the "J. Lo Hummer Act" requiring Jennifer to go down on any guy that asks her.
I agree, but for a slightly different reason. It's not the lack of formatting tools that bothers me as much as the inconsistency. Why have two different widgets (with completely different behaviors) for single line vs multiline text entry? Why have both and ?
I'm asking seriously here. For all I know there is a very good reason for this.
$4500 a week over a 10 week season. Plus the time they have put in for preseason practice, for which I understand they were not paid. $45,000 a year sounds like very little to me, especially when you factor in the ongoing risk of career ending injury that they assume.
While I agree with the gist of your post, I would suggest that with regards to national security, foreign aid is a bigger waste of money than SDI.
Don't get me wrong, I'm no isolationist and I support foreign aid for all kinds of moral and ideological reasons. However, plenty of regimes have demonstrated their willingness to take US aid with one hand while giving us the proverbial finger with the other. Not that this is surprising; they are simply acting according to self-interest. Still, it always seems to come as a shock to those in the US who cling to the romantic notion that if we give away enough money, everyone will play nice.
<shameless asskissing> By the way, your posts throughout this story have all been interesting and well argued. Nice work.
</shameless asskissing>
Slashdot Mirror
It wasn't Madden 2002, it was MS's NFL Fever 2003.
Kevin,
What the hell are you saying? Reading Comprehension 101 my friend. Where did I argue against free speech? What I was reponding to was the post that claimed that laws were not enacted on moral principles but to ensure the survival of society. I think it's obvious that we should have laws against slavery as well as laws protecting free speech. I also think it's obvious that these laws are not enacted because societies depend on them to survive but because those societies believe that those laws are morally right.
You've created a false distinction between political and moral decisions. Obviously, any law enacted by a political body is by definition a political decision, however that doesn't preclude it from being based on moral prinicples and hence a moral decision also. The decision to enact anti-slavery laws was made because enough people found slavery to be morally objectionable.
Your argument only makes sense if you completely ignore the meaning of the word morality. You seem to think that if a concept involves self interest then it is not a moral concept. Where do you think moral concepts evolved from? Morality is the extension of self interest to society as a whole. It is the embodiment of "our collective wish to not be killed, raped, ect." You say: "You don't want to be held against your will, neither do I so we ban slavery." But that's not really true. None of the abolitionists were in danger of become slaves themselves, they were extending their own self interest to others. Your first post argues that laws are passed based solely on pragmatic factors (survival of society, etc.), but slavery was not only not a threat to the survival of society, but it was pragmatically beneficial. Robert Fogel won a Nobel Prize in the 70s for an economic study showing that slave holding states in the US were about 10% more productive than free states. The only reason to ban slavery was that people empathetically extended their own self interest to the slaves and decided that slavery was morally wrong. I honestly don't see how you can admit that slavery is a moral issue yet still argue that anti-slavery laws are not based on morality.
That is patently ridiculous. Plenty of societies survived and thrived with slavery, so should we not have laws against slavery? Or child labor, or universal suffrage, etc.
Insightful? Only if you choose to ignore both history and economics. Corporate mergers were practically invented in the 60s, a decade in which corporations, flush with massive amounts of federal spending, decided that adding value by acquisition was less risky and therefore preferable to adding value by innovation. It gave rise to unwieldy behemoths like GM and ITT and added the term "conglomerate" to the economic lexicon. In fact, you can make a case that the 60s laid the foundation for all of the LBOs and divestitures of the 80s as the inefficiencies of size caught up with some of these corporations and they were bought up cheaply then broken up into parts that were individually more valuable than the whole. Not a very pretty legacy.
In contrast, the 90s saw economic growth that surpassed the 60s by pretty much any economic metric you care to name. And this growth was fueled largely by new companies, new markets, and real increases in productivity.
Oh, and no one in the modern era has ever used a 10 or 20 year horizon for all but the vaguest, most trite, planning (i.e. "Mission Statement"). Not only that but, at least in the US (which is what 2001 and, I presume you, are referring to), companies were notorious in the 60s for having extremely short-sighted strategies. For more information, see any of the scores of treatises published in the 70s and 80s on how to rectify this short-sightedness by emulating the Japanese.
In SQL Server 2000, it is not the default setting. During installation you have to either enter a password or explicitly check a box that says "I want a blank sa password"
Rather they will often superfically lower their price below profitability to get everybody in the region to buy from them. Then once they have driven their local competition to bankrupcy, they can raise prices and start charging more. If a new competitior opens up in town they can just restart the process.
So you admit that the whole cycle works by offering goods at lower prices, I don't see the problem there.
No, it places individual choice above top down control. Profit and commerce are ultimately results of individual consumer choice. McDonalds doesn't force burgers on people at gunpoint.
Your conclusion about heroin, however, is correct, which is why the war on drugs is immoral.
the article is also largely about privacy and security.
Unfortunately, it has nothing new or interesting to say on either one of those topics; that's why it's a political piece. Its primary purpose is to communicate the author's negative opinion of a competitor's product, not to explain or explore privacy and security issues.
I don't know. I see your point, but the fact is that the towers are not there anymore. It seems like it would be anachronistic for any movie that wasn't spefically set in pre-9/11/01 NY to show them, an anachronism that would draw way too much attention to itself at the expense of the rest of the movie. (Note: I haven't seen Zoolander, so I don't know if it specifically places itself in pre-9/11 time. I just assume that it is implied to be present day.)
Well, by that logic, why did they forget to leave out all the parts about free speech, equality of all humans, and all the other stuff that got amended upon the 'moral absolutes' of the Constitution?
Sorry, no disrespect intended, but I can't even parse that sentence. What did they "forget to leave out?" In any case the Declaration of Rights predates the constitution. The amendments comprising the Bill of Rights were left out of the original constitution because at the time the attitude of the framers was that they were unnecessary because any power not explicitly granted the federal government would reside with the people. During the long debates over ratification the Anti-Federalists took the position that basic rights (there's that absolutism for you) were too important to leave out and "rest on inference." (Jefferson, from memory so probably misquoted a little). Long story short, there was compromise to get the constituion ratified with the promise that the first congress would take up the bill of rights proposal.
If morals, and good/evil are such an absolute, why are we debating it?
We're not. You're debating it. I'm not trying to convince you one way or the other about moral relativism. If you'll notice I haven't claimed that morality is either absolute or relative. All I did was point out what I saw as the irony in the following facts:
1. The founding fathers believed in absolute morality and based the US constitution and bill of rights on this belief. If you disagree with this then we're done and all I can say is go read some Locke and/or Blackstone.
2. The slashdot posting community is heavily in favor of individual human rights (privacy, free speech, et al) and often references or quotes the founding fathers and the constitution in defense of said rights.
3. Given (1) and (2), one would reasonably expect most slashdot posters to support the idea of absolute morality since it is the concept that underpins their cherished ideals as expressed in (2) and originally set forth in (1).
Here comes the irony, wait for it....
4. Instead, most posters (and moderators by the looks of it) that addressed the topic came out on the side of moral relativism. In addition, some of the posts suggested that absolute morality was the sole province of religious dogmatics while no one acknowledged that some of its most eloquent and effective proponents were men of the Enlightenment.
All in all, this is a much too long-winded defense of my original statement which was simply poking fun at what I saw as contradictory behavior. Serves me right for trying to extrapolate consistency from the myriad of individuals that make up Slashdot. Moral of the story: You should never generalize. Ever.
I would tell them that. Don't forget that quite a few of your Founding Fathers were slave-owners who thought that only white male land-owners over the age of 21 should be allowed to vote. Ooops.
I haven't forgotten, I just don't see the relevance. All you've shown is that some (most/all) of the founding fathers were hypocritical. So what? That doesn't speak one way or the other about the concept of moral relativism. Also, a little further reading will show that at least a few of them were quite aware of their hypocrisy and went to some pains to rationalize it. Again, so what? The point is that they believed in moral absolutes and codified those absolutes in the US constitution and bill of rights.
Surely you see the irony of slashdotters, so quick to cite the constitution in defense of individual rights, denouncing the moral absolutism on which it is based as the sole province of religious zealots?
And remember, good and evil are relative
Tell that to the founding fathers. I find it ironic that, in this forum where everyone is quick to quote Jefferson and Franklin in defense of their rights, so many come to the defense of moral relativism. The entire bill of rights is based on "self-evident" truths laid out by Jeffeson in the DofI.
Well, at least you researched, but you didn't look closely enough. It's not like the US has been giving cash to the Taliban. The $43 million in May consisted almost entirely of wheat and was distributed by the UN and NGOs, not the Taliban.
Afghan-info.com
usinfo.state.gov
CNN
Personally I don't think that feeding starving people is a bad foreign policy.
I agree that AF1 is obviously a very different and more difficult target than the WTC. My point is just that an attack that would have been considered unthinkable had just taken place. It just seems like prudent and effective security policy for the military/secret service to act as if AF1 was a target until things were secured. Anyway, here is a link to a NYT article with the most info I've sen on the possible threat.
The US was under direct attack and long standing procedures designed to keep the president alive and in communication with the armed forces were put into effect. I wouldn't have expected anything less. Imagine if he had flown back to DC and something had happened to him? I can jsut imagine all of the armchair experts here on slashdot decrying the "stupidity" of Bush and the secret service.
They'll just freeze when winter comes.
with humpy love,
Thanks, I've always wondered about that.
with humpy love,
No genius, the guiding principle behind rule of law is not "if enough people want to do it then it must be ok", no matter what Mr. Crowley said. Laws have nothing to do with "the will of the people"
Every society since Hammurabi has has a code of laws, and not one in ten of those societies would have known what "will of the people" meant, much less wanted to enforce it. Laws are intended to prevent individuals acting in their own self interest from unfairly harming others or society as a whole.
Hey, I've got an idea: I'd really like a blow job from Jennifer Lopez, and I bet there's lots of guys out there that want the same thing. If I could just get enough signatures together, maybe I could convince Congress that the will of the people has spoken and they will pass the "J. Lo Hummer Act" requiring Jennifer to go down on any guy that asks her.
with humpy love,
So do you donate 100% of your salary to charity, or are you just an elitist hypocrite?
with humpy love,
I'm asking seriously here. For all I know there is a very good reason for this.
with humpy love,
$4500 a week over a 10 week season. Plus the time they have put in for preseason practice, for which I understand they were not paid. $45,000 a year sounds like very little to me, especially when you factor in the ongoing risk of career ending injury that they assume.
with humpy love,
Don't get me wrong, I'm no isolationist and I support foreign aid for all kinds of moral and ideological reasons. However, plenty of regimes have demonstrated their willingness to take US aid with one hand while giving us the proverbial finger with the other. Not that this is surprising; they are simply acting according to self-interest. Still, it always seems to come as a shock to those in the US who cling to the romantic notion that if we give away enough money, everyone will play nice.
<shameless asskissing>
By the way, your posts throughout this story have all been interesting and well argued. Nice work.
</shameless asskissing>
with humpy love,
After so many of these, I'm beginning to suspect that Hemos is just trolling now.
with humpy love,
And where exactly would one find one of those these days?
with humpy love,