And why should the company that wanted to take over her identity not have had the trademark? In fact, they probably do have it. According to the blogger, it had existed under that name since 2002, before she was successful and there was any argument.
I'm not a word nazi, so we can drop the Commie/Marx rethoric for all that I care.
You, sir, want me to be in a tribe with the rest of the world, where my "inherent tribalism" will make me "do my best to help the entire world".
No, you're right. That sounds really nice. The "fuck you" spoiled it somewhat, but I'm sure this is only because evil me refused to realize how good your intentions have been.
The last bit is very poignant, and this I'll redirect it to you; "who are you to know something better?"
You got me wrong: It was meant to be an exaggeration of what you already said to me. I didn't mean to ask you that question, but remind you of you having asked it to me.
Good and evil are trickier, since they are ontologically meaningless terms based almost completely on culture. [...] I generally ascribe evil as "harm", and good as "utility".
I take the latter definition and in that we have common ground. That is objective and it's open to science. (I would restrict (moral) good and evil to things caused by man, otherwise you have evil sicknesses and accidents.)
A politician doesn't know better than me once we enter the land of ideology and philosophy and depart the land of facts.
I couldn't disagree more. I do agree that there has been little success in tackling the matter over the millenia of known history, but I hold that this is not in spite of much effort, but because of much effort of purposeful obfuscation.
There is one objective moral good. It can be figured out and understood scientifically. To be good isn't about intentions, but about having figured out what it actually is.
That is precisely the core of Objectivist ethics, as you probably know. People hate it because their alleged good intentions is all they have.
Those people who are the opposite of intellectual have it so much better, where lack of awareness can lead to certainty. Imagine how nice the world would be without intellectuals... no science... no arts... no founding of this country.
This is/.
Do you actually assumed that I used the word intellectual to mean anything but pseudo-intellectual, impostor, quack? I have a degree in Maths, I was drawn especially to the theoretical side, and loved it like nothing else for years. I know academia, and I know it's not all nonsense. I know that things often are very complicated indeed. I also know that large parts of the academia *are* deluded quacks (not so much in Maths though, but you don't have to go to the humanities to see the quality level dropping).
Every terrible even in human history was caused by someone 100% convinced that they are correct.
I'm not a dogmatist, I do change my views when warranted. I do disagree with any intellectual (this time I mean the proper sense of the word) on many issues, including Rand. I do, for example, known that her view on Maths is fundamentally wrong, and that she was mistaken in her criticism of important mathematicians of her time, Russel in particular. She saw the Russel was a socialist, heard him say that "axioms are arbitrary," and that the Principia Mathematica consisted of tomes only to prove trivialities. So she concluded he was a fraud. I can see how it looked from her perspective, although I know her conclusion to be wrong.
I still don't believe that she did anything to justify the amount of hatred she received and continues to receive up until now.
I'm authoritarian because I think everyone should live their lives as they see fit as long as it causes no harm to others?
That's a bromide. Everyone believes that. Everyone talks about "freedom" and blames "tyranny".
The question remains, who is actually oppressing whom. I do understand that this question is difficult, even if one assumes the motivation to figure it out. But if, as you say, the answer to this question lies outside the realm of facts (as it's philosophical and in particular political), then surely you won't.
That then implies that you do it in secret so that you don't get recompense in the form of social credit.
A lot of times people don't. Well I suppose they might, but in such a small way that it is pretty much meaningless. People do small acts of altruistic kindness all the time, and don't expect a thing from it.
I recall an event where a teller at a student party was giving me a Euro too much change and I handed it back. He was baffled. He thanked me like I changed his world view. I told this to a couple of my friends because I thought it a weird reaction - all of them told that they would have kept the Euro.
One lousy Euro, that buys you virtually nothing, while keeping it makes you a thief.
It's a matter of what one has experienced one's fellow men to be. And to me there's a very clear trend: Those who talk about altruism and "meaning it well" most while blaming "sociopaths" for the evils of the world are the worst.
Let's not forget that you get your kicks out of posting here and being perceived as "the good guy" who's reasonable and nice.
Right, since being reasonable is a negative character trait, as opposed to being stodge, dogmatic, and authoritarian. What happens if I actually am reasonable and nice?
You're not reasonable and nice at all. Would you hand out T-shirts to ridicule some religious minority? You are stodge, dogmatic and authoritarian, and you can afford that because you hold largely mainstream opinions. To the majority, you are indeed the nice guy.
Actually anyone who "means well" are about as dangerous as anyone who claims to "know better", or do things "for your own good".
The first and last, yes.
But the "know better" is nonsense, and that's "the other side" I'm talking about. You don't even believe that anybody can know better:
Its all just mapping some purely subjective ideological world onto the real one, ignoring the costs of doing so.
It's all subjective, right? Who is he to know? How can we know anything, right?
Randroids, Libertarians, Communists, PETA, the radical left, fundamentalists of all stripes, they're all the same in my eyes
All the same, you say. It doesn't matter what you believe, as long as you don't do it *fundamentally* (ie are an extremist).
I might be, as someone here recently called me, a radical moderate
So it seems. And that's the other side. That's what the liberals and intellectuals are, you guys: No convictions, no principles, no good and evil. Conformism.
Beyond the rant; I wasn't alive at the time, so I couldn't cheer them if I wanted to.
You call yourself the labels that they used for themselves: liberal, intellectual, progressive. When someone positions himself close to Ayn Rand, you draw your conclusions based on that - so do I. You're right, labels are dangerous, but you put those on yourself, not I.
Nothing good has ever emerged from that flavor of reasoning, either. Us vs. them is one of the greatest cognitive idiocies of humanity.
Because we're all the equal, right? We're all the same, no one has it right, who are you to think you know something better... give it up... give it up... give it up...
Altruism is also donating to charity, generally helping those less fortunate, doing any "good works" without expectation of recompense (monitary or otherwise),
That then implies that you do it in secret so that you don't get recompense in the form of social credit. Let's not forget that you get your kicks out of posting here and being perceived as "the good guy" who's reasonable and nice. Donate something as well, and you're "one of us" and liked.
She came from a society ruled by the worst bits of "collectivism",
Indeed she did. Her family's future destroyed by thugs, she only barely escaped as a youngster. American liberals like you were cheering to the criminals that did this to them, because, unlike Hitler, they "meant it well". They did it out of "compassion" and "pity for the less fortunate".
And of course it's all intention that counts, right? You can't be evil, because you mean it so well, right?
Every time I read a self-proclaimed Objectivist talking I think: What an idiot, I'm not Objectivist at all. And then I hear the other side again and it reminds me how bad it gets.
You guys are evil, there's just no other word for it.
Dawkins indeed explains this very well in the "Selfish Gene". But it's not so much because others share our genes (gene-selection is only relevant in case of very close relatives).
More is explained with reciprocal altruism.
Also, under the selfish gene theory, it is easy to see how genes that bring an individual to identify with a tribe or similar concepts might bring an advantage.
Of course none of this has anything to do with self-sacrifice, which is what people usually mean when they praise altruism.
Are you kidding? The nationalistic psychosis is on a steep decline all over the world. Maybe it's less visible in the US than in Europe, but even in the US there's no draft anymore. There won't be any large wars anymore, it's over, nationalism is about to die.
My loyalties surely are towards certain groups of people defined otherwise than race and passport.
And whatever is scarce is then *unequaly* distributed among individuals rather than nations, who compete on a capitalistic global free market.
But I suppose by "waking up from nationalism" you probably meant some form of "fair" rule by a benevolent world government, right?
And if you think about it, that's how these terms are used in practice - especially by those people who hate Rand.
Look in the bible at the story of Abraham, the "good guy" who is willing to sacrifice his favourite(!) son. He's an altruist.
Look at how wealthy people get called selfish for rather giving their kids a better good education that most can afford.
Hurting "loved ones" because society demands it is indeed the hallmark of altruism and its practice is the norm due to the current moral climate.
Rand didn't redefine anything, she just phrased the definition according to the usage of those words - in harsh contrast to the dictionaries which are again written by altruists.
[...] caused by a combination of poorly thought-out and brutally implemented collectivization, habitual use of fake statistics, and a bureaucratic culture where underlings were afraid to tell their higher-ups that the higher-ups' "wise policies" [...]
The "weahlthy whiners" don't compare their situation to that of the "freeloaders". They are comparing to the situation they'd be in if those simply wouldn't exist.
I don't have to want to trade places with something I don't want to be enslaved to. Maybe I just want to be free of it.
And of course I'm not rich, but then again this isn't really about money anyway, is it?
Once the Catholic Church had such a lever, and they were also riding the moral high-ground.
Of course, Google isn't anywhere near that, but I still think the reason why Google is liked is "do no evil" and why Microsoft is hated is "FOSS is unamerican and a cancer". In other words, people trust those who talk nicely.
That's why politicians do exactly that.
I trust those who talk plainly. I'm a big boy, I know that no one's "the good guy" - whatever that ought to mean in the first place.
Statism is coming to an end. The American federal government is collapsing and that is identified with a collapse of America itself, because that statist doctrine is internalised by pretty much everyone.
China is going well and I'm happy about it, but China won't replace America. The next, big technology scoop will come from America, as usual. For a long time to come.
Mod parent up. This is the best example I've seen so far.
Although I've heard of voices in the Netherlands that demand government-payed sex-workers for disabled men. Although I don't know whether this is true, I met people who didn't consider this absurd (I'm German).
And the other 100 people sitting on their asses expect those 3 to provide for them as well..
Even in the most comfortable welfare states, the vast majority of people get up and go to work every day without complaint. This claim that no one would work in a welfare state doesn't square with decades of real-world practice.
I'm living in Germany and I know quite a lot of people who choose not to work.
Also, there's a much more interesting point: People often overestimate the worth of there work. If wealth is distributed by the government, it benefits those whose work is really not worth that much - everyone has the same rights, after all.
That's exactly why "human rights" are expanded in that way. It is basically supposed to cover everything mister-average-guy could ask for.
This is what sickens me. These people have more money than anyone could ever possibly spend, yet STILL manage to be greedy, cheap bastards.
He can buy companies and these cost a lot.
Also, I don't see how giving away a fifth of your billions is any different than giving away a fifth of your thousands. Would you want to share your pension with someone else you think he hasn't deserved any of it?
Also, if you've got friends who consider it a burden to work I would reconsider the friendship. If you consider it a burden to work, I'd reconsider that attitude. Zuckerberg doesn't have to work. But then again he's a greedy bastard. Extorting money and then die as a worthless playboy isn't his cup of tea I suppose.
Slashdot Mirror
People don't hate cars quite as much as they hate facebook, that's why.
You presonally can't control them, but if they screw to many like you, people won't come to them in too few numbers.
That's the control I meant.
People enter into these disgusting one sided contracts multiple times per day [...]
Maybe facebook and other popular content sites have something to offer that a self-hosted site doesn't provide. Better SEO/coverage for example.
In that light, the contracts aren't single-sided (note that the "customers" usually don't pay). That's neither stupid nor disgusting.
Then you run crying to the politicians because now you need [...]
That's very wise, but is this a RMS attitude? Never heard him talk like that.
And also, *this* is where it gets disgusting and stupid (although this doesn't apply to the OP's blogger).
And why should the company that wanted to take over her identity not have had the trademark? In fact, they probably do have it. According to the blogger, it had existed under that name since 2002, before she was successful and there was any argument.
All owners of a service are under control of the customers, which have an interest in the reliability of their identity.
I'm not a word nazi, so we can drop the Commie/Marx rethoric for all that I care.
You, sir, want me to be in a tribe with the rest of the world, where my "inherent tribalism" will make me "do my best to help the entire world".
No, you're right. That sounds really nice. The "fuck you" spoiled it somewhat, but I'm sure this is only because evil me refused to realize how good your intentions have been.
The last bit is very poignant, and this I'll redirect it to you; "who are you to know something better?"
You got me wrong: It was meant to be an exaggeration of what you already said to me. I didn't mean to ask you that question, but remind you of you having asked it to me.
Good and evil are trickier, since they are ontologically meaningless terms based almost completely on culture. [...] I generally ascribe evil as "harm", and good as "utility".
I take the latter definition and in that we have common ground. That is objective and it's open to science. (I would restrict (moral) good and evil to things caused by man, otherwise you have evil sicknesses and accidents.)
A politician doesn't know better than me once we enter the land of ideology and philosophy and depart the land of facts.
I couldn't disagree more. I do agree that there has been little success in tackling the matter over the millenia of known history, but I hold that this is not in spite of much effort, but because of much effort of purposeful obfuscation.
There is one objective moral good. It can be figured out and understood scientifically. To be good isn't about intentions, but about having figured out what it actually is.
That is precisely the core of Objectivist ethics, as you probably know. People hate it because their alleged good intentions is all they have.
Those people who are the opposite of intellectual have it so much better, where lack of awareness can lead to certainty. Imagine how nice the world would be without intellectuals... no science... no arts... no founding of this country.
This is /.
Do you actually assumed that I used the word intellectual to mean anything but pseudo-intellectual, impostor, quack? I have a degree in Maths, I was drawn especially to the theoretical side, and loved it like nothing else for years. I know academia, and I know it's not all nonsense. I know that things often are very complicated indeed. I also know that large parts of the academia *are* deluded quacks (not so much in Maths though, but you don't have to go to the humanities to see the quality level dropping).
Every terrible even in human history was caused by someone 100% convinced that they are correct.
I'm not a dogmatist, I do change my views when warranted. I do disagree with any intellectual (this time I mean the proper sense of the word) on many issues, including Rand. I do, for example, known that her view on Maths is fundamentally wrong, and that she was mistaken in her criticism of important mathematicians of her time, Russel in particular. She saw the Russel was a socialist, heard him say that "axioms are arbitrary," and that the Principia Mathematica consisted of tomes only to prove trivialities. So she concluded he was a fraud. I can see how it looked from her perspective, although I know her conclusion to be wrong.
I still don't believe that she did anything to justify the amount of hatred she received and continues to receive up until now.
I'm authoritarian because I think everyone should live their lives as they see fit as long as it causes no harm to others?
That's a bromide. Everyone believes that. Everyone talks about "freedom" and blames "tyranny".
The question remains, who is actually oppressing whom. I do understand that this question is difficult, even if one assumes the motivation to figure it out. But if, as you say, the answer to this question lies outside the realm of facts (as it's philosophical and in particular political), then surely you won't.
That then implies that you do it in secret so that you don't get recompense in the form of social credit.
A lot of times people don't. Well I suppose they might, but in such a small way that it is pretty much meaningless. People do small acts of altruistic kindness all the time, and don't expect a thing from it.
I recall an event where a teller at a student party was giving me a Euro too much change and I handed it back. He was baffled. He thanked me like I changed his world view. I told this to a couple of my friends because I thought it a weird reaction - all of them told that they would have kept the Euro.
One lousy Euro, that buys you virtually nothing, while keeping it makes you a thief.
It's a matter of what one has experienced one's fellow men to be. And to me there's a very clear trend: Those who talk about altruism and "meaning it well" most while blaming "sociopaths" for the evils of the world are the worst.
Let's not forget that you get your kicks out of posting here and being perceived as "the good guy" who's reasonable and nice.
Right, since being reasonable is a negative character trait, as opposed to being stodge, dogmatic, and authoritarian. What happens if I actually am reasonable and nice?
You're not reasonable and nice at all. Would you hand out T-shirts to ridicule some religious minority? You are stodge, dogmatic and authoritarian, and you can afford that because you hold largely mainstream opinions. To the majority, you are indeed the nice guy.
Actually anyone who "means well" are about as dangerous as anyone who claims to "know better", or do things "for your own good".
The first and last, yes.
But the "know better" is nonsense, and that's "the other side" I'm talking about. You don't even believe that anybody can know better:
Its all just mapping some purely subjective ideological world onto the real one, ignoring the costs of doing so.
It's all subjective, right? Who is he to know? How can we know anything, right?
Randroids, Libertarians, Communists, PETA, the radical left, fundamentalists of all stripes, they're all the same in my eyes
All the same, you say. It doesn't matter what you believe, as long as you don't do it *fundamentally* (ie are an extremist).
I might be, as someone here recently called me, a radical moderate
So it seems. And that's the other side. That's what the liberals and intellectuals are, you guys: No convictions, no principles, no good and evil. Conformism.
Beyond the rant; I wasn't alive at the time, so I couldn't cheer them if I wanted to.
You call yourself the labels that they used for themselves: liberal, intellectual, progressive. When someone positions himself close to Ayn Rand, you draw your conclusions based on that - so do I. You're right, labels are dangerous, but you put those on yourself, not I.
Nothing good has ever emerged from that flavor of reasoning, either. Us vs. them is one of the greatest cognitive idiocies of humanity.
Because we're all the equal, right? We're all the same, no one has it right, who are you to think you know something better... give it up... give it up... give it up...
For the same reason that global corporations help others by producing goods.
No leftist ever called them altruists either.
As good as the Communist half of the world? Oh wait, it just works when the whole world does it together, right?
Altruism is also donating to charity, generally helping those less fortunate, doing any "good works" without expectation of recompense (monitary or otherwise),
That then implies that you do it in secret so that you don't get recompense in the form of social credit. Let's not forget that you get your kicks out of posting here and being perceived as "the good guy" who's reasonable and nice. Donate something as well, and you're "one of us" and liked.
She came from a society ruled by the worst bits of "collectivism",
Indeed she did. Her family's future destroyed by thugs, she only barely escaped as a youngster. American liberals like you were cheering to the criminals that did this to them, because, unlike Hitler, they "meant it well". They did it out of "compassion" and "pity for the less fortunate".
And of course it's all intention that counts, right? You can't be evil, because you mean it so well, right?
Every time I read a self-proclaimed Objectivist talking I think: What an idiot, I'm not Objectivist at all. And then I hear the other side again and it reminds me how bad it gets.
You guys are evil, there's just no other word for it.
International Communism. The World Revolution. Thank God there was another tribe that stopped it.
Dawkins indeed explains this very well in the "Selfish Gene". But it's not so much because others share our genes (gene-selection is only relevant in case of very close relatives).
More is explained with reciprocal altruism.
Also, under the selfish gene theory, it is easy to see how genes that bring an individual to identify with a tribe or similar concepts might bring an advantage.
Of course none of this has anything to do with self-sacrifice, which is what people usually mean when they praise altruism.
Are you kidding? The nationalistic psychosis is on a steep decline all over the world. Maybe it's less visible in the US than in Europe, but even in the US there's no draft anymore. There won't be any large wars anymore, it's over, nationalism is about to die.
My loyalties surely are towards certain groups of people defined otherwise than race and passport.
And whatever is scarce is then *unequaly* distributed among individuals rather than nations, who compete on a capitalistic global free market.
But I suppose by "waking up from nationalism" you probably meant some form of "fair" rule by a benevolent world government, right?
And if you think about it, that's how these terms are used in practice - especially by those people who hate Rand. Look in the bible at the story of Abraham, the "good guy" who is willing to sacrifice his favourite(!) son. He's an altruist. Look at how wealthy people get called selfish for rather giving their kids a better good education that most can afford. Hurting "loved ones" because society demands it is indeed the hallmark of altruism and its practice is the norm due to the current moral climate. Rand didn't redefine anything, she just phrased the definition according to the usage of those words - in harsh contrast to the dictionaries which are again written by altruists.
[...] caused by a combination of poorly thought-out and brutally implemented collectivization, habitual use of fake statistics, and a bureaucratic culture where underlings were afraid to tell their higher-ups that the higher-ups' "wise policies" [...]
Sometimes also called Communism.
This will be a supremely unpopular stance among a large section here - but taxes are one of the best bargains in any marketplace.
No, sorry, this is very mainstream.
You're making a logical error.
The "weahlthy whiners" don't compare their situation to that of the "freeloaders". They are comparing to the situation they'd be in if those simply wouldn't exist.
I don't have to want to trade places with something I don't want to be enslaved to. Maybe I just want to be free of it.
And of course I'm not rich, but then again this isn't really about money anyway, is it?
Once the Catholic Church had such a lever, and they were also riding the moral high-ground.
Of course, Google isn't anywhere near that, but I still think the reason why Google is liked is "do no evil" and why Microsoft is hated is "FOSS is unamerican and a cancer". In other words, people trust those who talk nicely.
That's why politicians do exactly that.
I trust those who talk plainly. I'm a big boy, I know that no one's "the good guy" - whatever that ought to mean in the first place.
Statism is coming to an end. The American federal government is collapsing and that is identified with a collapse of America itself, because that statist doctrine is internalised by pretty much everyone.
China is going well and I'm happy about it, but China won't replace America. The next, big technology scoop will come from America, as usual. For a long time to come.
Mod parent up. This is the best example I've seen so far.
Although I've heard of voices in the Netherlands that demand government-payed sex-workers for disabled men. Although I don't know whether this is true, I met people who didn't consider this absurd (I'm German).
He didn't say loafing around, he said "nothing productive".
Most people in that situation spend their time "making the world better" in various scary ways.
He's a minority in his degree of self-reflection and honesty. In the above trait, he's the norm.
Even in the most comfortable welfare states, the vast majority of people get up and go to work every day without complaint. This claim that no one would work in a welfare state doesn't square with decades of real-world practice.
I'm living in Germany and I know quite a lot of people who choose not to work.
Also, there's a much more interesting point: People often overestimate the worth of there work. If wealth is distributed by the government, it benefits those whose work is really not worth that much - everyone has the same rights, after all.
That's exactly why "human rights" are expanded in that way. It is basically supposed to cover everything mister-average-guy could ask for.
This is what sickens me. These people have more money than anyone could ever possibly spend, yet STILL manage to be greedy, cheap bastards.
He can buy companies and these cost a lot.
Also, I don't see how giving away a fifth of your billions is any different than giving away a fifth of your thousands. Would you want to share your pension with someone else you think he hasn't deserved any of it?
Also, if you've got friends who consider it a burden to work I would reconsider the friendship. If you consider it a burden to work, I'd reconsider that attitude. Zuckerberg doesn't have to work. But then again he's a greedy bastard. Extorting money and then die as a worthless playboy isn't his cup of tea I suppose.
I've never seen a pro-nuclear activist.