Take away the motivation of a limited lifespan and suddenly everything seems a lot less urgent. Motivation to learn, motivation to find the meaning of life, motivation to accomplish something. After all, you can always do it later.
Yes, yes; that's the point! I want to spend the first several hundred years of my youth debating on slashdot!
Hey, that's proof positive the article wasn't paying for. Somebody made the exact same comment here. Half the time reading the slashdot commentary on an article is more insightful than reading the article, anyway. (Not sure if that's a positive comment for slashdot, or a negative commentary on the quality of these articles.)
Are we both talking about the Fortune article? If not, which is the one that contains a "succinct (and utterly British) answer to overpopulation objections to life extension than the one at the end of this article!"
I see a loophole here for software shrink wrap agreements. I receive several pieces of unsolicited software in the mail from AOL, regularly. Does this mean that I have agreed to nothing and may do anything I wish with them, including disassembly, reverse engineering, duplication, modification, and distribution?
The post I was responding to was talking about the price of diesel for purchase, so I don't think he was planning on making it as described in this article.
It seems to me that companies ought to have a right to exchange services with people on terms that both sides agree on.
I agree, but this has had many implications that I have struggled to come to grips with. This amounts to saying it's okay with me if people do certain things together that I might believe are morally wrong, as long as they both agree together and don't affect anyone else. It amounts to saying that whether or not people know what is best for them, it is not up to society and/or the government to come "help" them make the right decision. It amounts to saying that government is not entitled to pass just any old law, simply because something is a "good idea."
It means that if people want to consume foods that are bad for them or worse, drugs that are bad for them, we have no business interfering. (I thought California had this figured out, actually.)
It means that if two people want to exchange "services" of a nature that I personally find immoral and abhorrent, I can't try to use government to stop them. Whether such "services" are exchanged for money, for pleasure, or whatever.
It means that there's a universal "morality" of sorts that says you can agree to anything but can't make someone do something against their will; interestingly, it also means that whatever other morality you might subscribe to, you can't force it on anyone unless they agree to it.
It means wages can't be set by law.
It means software licenses are more or less legitimate, although we might still question the "shrink-wrap agreement" stuff.
It means that no fault divorce should perhaps be eliminated in cases where the two parties agree to that kind of binding agreement.
Some of these scare me; a different set of them may scare you. Meanwhile, some delight me. All in all, though, I've concluded that I can't delegate to government a right that I do not have, that a group of us cannot delegate to government a right we do not have, even if we vote on it and majority wins, and that I can't condone the use of government to interfere with people's private agreements and decisions as long as those decisions do not directly affect anyone else.
I've always felt the whole Jurassic Park thing was flawed, anyway. The moral seemed to be that something as big as cloning the dinosaurs would automatically be the wrong thing to do, that this was an area of science man should not tread into, etc. The problem is that the reason the dinosaurs got out of control was because of the actions of one specific man, Dennis Nedry, who messed up most of the park's safety features. The technology did not get out of control because of its own inherent nature, but because of something one man did wrong. The wrong act was what he did, not the cloning of the dinosaurs. So to me, Ian's contention didn't even make sense. I think the sequels may have tried to rectify this somewhat by showing the technology getting out of control even without the presence of corporate espionage, but I never finished them, so I don't know.
Aside: I have trouble with the idea that a God would create male and female of all higher animals, then only create a man and forget the female of his 'highest' creation until the man complained about it. If he had never intended a complementary sex, why make the first human as a 'man' anyway? An immortal neuter would have been fine and less trouble (a neuter wouldn't complain about an absence of women, either, and the whole sorry saga could have been omnipotently avoided).
The Old Testament writings pose a problem for most modern readers in that they often relate the actions of the main characters without relating their motivations. This leads to all kinds of interesting theological arguments: did Abraham do such and such because God told him, or because he thought it was a good idea? If God didn't tell him, was it a good idea? etc., etc., etc.
I think you are responding not to the Old Testament narrative but to someone's interpretation (possibly your own, but more probably one somebody gave you) of the motives of God. The OT does not state that God "forgot" to create a female; merely that He did not at first and then later created her. It is never stated whether He intended to do so all along or not, or whether she was an afterthought, or whether He forgot and made up for the mistake, or whatever. Most Bible-based religions I know make a theological point that God left the man without a woman for a time so the man could see how much he needed companionship, specifically a wife. The Orthodox Jews even draw from this a theological belief that woman, being the last thing created, is the pinnacle of God's creation and is more perfect and complete than man. (Orthodox Judaism stipulates that it is a command for men to marry, but not for women.)
No religion I know interprets the story of the creation of woman in any way that leads me to believe they think her creation was not planned from the beginning.
Sorry if I bored you with theology.:) Just wanted to comment that the facts of the matter aren't nearly so irrational as you remembered them. Incidentally, it's not recorded that the man complained at the absence of the woman, either. Her creation was initiated by God, after God stated that it was not good for the man to be alone. (Which gets us into the further debate of whether he meant it wasn't good for any man to be single, or whether he meant it wasn't good for the first man to be alone because man would never reproduce. But you don't want to hear that.)
My mother, an earth science teacher, sat angrily through the last few years of asteroid-impact disaster movies making sounds of irritation whenever they stated factually that the dinosaurs were killed by an asteroid impact. Although that is the favored theory today, my understanding is that there is no consensus.
When I was a child they taught four or five different theories about the end of the dinosaurs; I can't even remember any of the others, now.
lol; well, I didn't say it was perfect. I just thought it was kind of neat. I'm an American, and not sure I ever touched an A4 paper, myself, actually.
You don't get it. It keeps going, recursively. Two A4's equal an A3, and two A3's equal an A2, and so on. The deal is that the paper is in such proportion that all A* papers are in the exact same proportion. That's not true if you double a 8 1/2 by 11. The proportion there is.77272, while the proportion for a doubled sheet, 11x17 is.647059.
I'm betting the Golden Ratio comes into A4 paper somehow; anyone want to comment?
I always used to want to be a math and computer science teacher. Events have changed, though, and I'm now married to a wonderful girl who was homeschooled. I'm still going to be a math and computer science teacher... but for my own children.:)
Governments are created out of the collective will of the people.
Incidentally, that's a relatively recent phenomenon. In the past, governments were created when one small group conquered another, and then that group conquered another small group, etc. Governments were generally created by armed force. Only recently have we as a society delved into government of the people. And still the collective will you are discussing is a majority rule that may not be acceptable to the minority. Hitler arose in a democratic government, you know.
But in real life, people don't practice a "live and let live" policy, and that's why we have governments!
And what I am suggesting is that to secure my right to live and let live I have the authority to establish whatever kind of government I want with people willing to participate with me, and that to defend against me if I do not practice such a policy other people have the same right. Of course, this is not a new concept, the Declaration of Independence stated, "We hold these truths to be self-evident... that they [men] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights... That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." The only different thing I am proposing is that when a minority doesn't consent, they should have the right to opt-out and do whatever they wish (establish their organization, or whatever)... so long as it's all voluntary and they practice live and let live. What I'm saying is that noone has the right to compel anyone to be part of their governmental system, which is basically what Thomas Jefferson said in the Declaration. He probably just never imagined a possibility of multiple governments being instituted in the same geographic area.
Part of the reason we probably don't see eye to eye on this is I view government as having an extraordinarily limited role. I view them as being established basically solely for the purpose of securing those unalienable rights to life and liberty. When a government goes out of control, be it the government I belong to or a government I do not, I assert that I have the right to institute a government to secure my rights and defend me against the rogue state.
This might be feasible, if every person in every one of those governments agrees to live by this system... which is brain-meltingly unlikely to happen. As soon as you get one rogue government which will stop at nothing to consolidate its power...
... you have a hundred governments fighting against it to defend the liberty of their citizens.
The answer to all of your objections is that the citizens in this society must as a whole desire their own liberty and be willing to fight for it. NO free form of government can compensate for a lack of that in its citizens.
Your scenario about the women being oppressed by the government they are not a part of is answered by the desire for liberty on the part of the government they are a part of, and the willingness to fight to defend it. We don't have militant Islam taking over in the United States right now because they know that is a hopeless battle; it will be lost because of our will and ability to fight. Our ability comes from our numbers. With suffient numbers of people willing to fight for liberty, oppressive governments will have to stick to oppressing their own citizens.
Unless, of course, those small governments band together in order to defeat that threat... which makes them into a single government for practical purposes.
Yep, and then they can separate again after the threat is eliminated, like the Allies in WWII. Or they can maintain an alliance like NATO, which does not make its members into a single government. They can do whatever they choose and whatever they deem necessary. An infinitely malleable system.
Slashdot Mirror
Take away the motivation of a limited lifespan and suddenly everything seems a lot less urgent. Motivation to learn, motivation to find the meaning of life, motivation to accomplish something. After all, you can always do it later.
Yes, yes; that's the point! I want to spend the first several hundred years of my youth debating on slashdot!
Ah, okay. Thanks.
Hey, that's proof positive the article wasn't paying for. Somebody made the exact same comment here. Half the time reading the slashdot commentary on an article is more insightful than reading the article, anyway. (Not sure if that's a positive comment for slashdot, or a negative commentary on the quality of these articles.)
Are we both talking about the Fortune article? If not, which is the one that contains a "succinct (and utterly British) answer to overpopulation objections to life extension than the one at the end of this article!"
How can I read it without paying the fee? I'm curious. :)
Did you actually read the article? Did you pay the $4.95?
I don't see how anyone has read the article. It's asking me for a fee.
The only serious mechanism for social change is the death of the powerful.
I live in the U.S. where we have elections, you insensitive clod!
I see a loophole here for software shrink wrap agreements. I receive several pieces of unsolicited software in the mail from AOL, regularly. Does this mean that I have agreed to nothing and may do anything I wish with them, including disassembly, reverse engineering, duplication, modification, and distribution?
Did noone check the parent of my post to get context? The guy I was responding to said in his area, diesel is about the price of midgrade.
Really all I was trying to comment on was the usefulness of putting midgrade in cars not designed for it, but that seems to have gotten obscured...
Sigh.
The post I was responding to was talking about the price of diesel for purchase, so I don't think he was planning on making it as described in this article.
Sigh.
Ah. That would explain it. Thanks for supplying the missing link in my chain of logic. :)
(P.S., in case anyone was wondering: I do know how to spell "sense.")
Since most cars don't need and can't use anything higher than the regular grade of gasoline, switching to diesel to save money doesn't make much since if diesel is the price of mid-grade.
I don't think high powered hardware will ever be free, but I haven't thought about this that much.
However, I have believed for a long time now that the subsumption of proprietary software by Free software is inevitable.
So asserting that hardware will be free leaves me in a world where I won't have to pay for anything, except support if I want it. Hmmm....
It seems to me that companies ought to have a right to exchange services with people on terms that both sides agree on.
I agree, but this has had many implications that I have struggled to come to grips with. This amounts to saying it's okay with me if people do certain things together that I might believe are morally wrong, as long as they both agree together and don't affect anyone else. It amounts to saying that whether or not people know what is best for them, it is not up to society and/or the government to come "help" them make the right decision. It amounts to saying that government is not entitled to pass just any old law, simply because something is a "good idea."
It means that if people want to consume foods that are bad for them or worse, drugs that are bad for them, we have no business interfering. (I thought California had this figured out, actually.)
It means that if two people want to exchange "services" of a nature that I personally find immoral and abhorrent, I can't try to use government to stop them. Whether such "services" are exchanged for money, for pleasure, or whatever.
It means that there's a universal "morality" of sorts that says you can agree to anything but can't make someone do something against their will; interestingly, it also means that whatever other morality you might subscribe to, you can't force it on anyone unless they agree to it.
It means wages can't be set by law.
It means software licenses are more or less legitimate, although we might still question the "shrink-wrap agreement" stuff.
It means that no fault divorce should perhaps be eliminated in cases where the two parties agree to that kind of binding agreement.
Some of these scare me; a different set of them may scare you. Meanwhile, some delight me. All in all, though, I've concluded that I can't delegate to government a right that I do not have, that a group of us cannot delegate to government a right we do not have, even if we vote on it and majority wins, and that I can't condone the use of government to interfere with people's private agreements and decisions as long as those decisions do not directly affect anyone else.
Scary. But it could make for a remarkable world.
I've always felt the whole Jurassic Park thing was flawed, anyway. The moral seemed to be that something as big as cloning the dinosaurs would automatically be the wrong thing to do, that this was an area of science man should not tread into, etc. The problem is that the reason the dinosaurs got out of control was because of the actions of one specific man, Dennis Nedry, who messed up most of the park's safety features. The technology did not get out of control because of its own inherent nature, but because of something one man did wrong. The wrong act was what he did, not the cloning of the dinosaurs. So to me, Ian's contention didn't even make sense. I think the sequels may have tried to rectify this somewhat by showing the technology getting out of control even without the presence of corporate espionage, but I never finished them, so I don't know.
Aside: I have trouble with the idea that a God would create male and female of all higher animals, then only create a man and forget the female of his 'highest' creation until the man complained about it. If he had never intended a complementary sex, why make the first human as a 'man' anyway? An immortal neuter would have been fine and less trouble (a neuter wouldn't complain about an absence of women, either, and the whole sorry saga could have been omnipotently avoided).
The Old Testament writings pose a problem for most modern readers in that they often relate the actions of the main characters without relating their motivations. This leads to all kinds of interesting theological arguments: did Abraham do such and such because God told him, or because he thought it was a good idea? If God didn't tell him, was it a good idea? etc., etc., etc.
I think you are responding not to the Old Testament narrative but to someone's interpretation (possibly your own, but more probably one somebody gave you) of the motives of God. The OT does not state that God "forgot" to create a female; merely that He did not at first and then later created her. It is never stated whether He intended to do so all along or not, or whether she was an afterthought, or whether He forgot and made up for the mistake, or whatever. Most Bible-based religions I know make a theological point that God left the man without a woman for a time so the man could see how much he needed companionship, specifically a wife. The Orthodox Jews even draw from this a theological belief that woman, being the last thing created, is the pinnacle of God's creation and is more perfect and complete than man. (Orthodox Judaism stipulates that it is a command for men to marry, but not for women.)
No religion I know interprets the story of the creation of woman in any way that leads me to believe they think her creation was not planned from the beginning.
Sorry if I bored you with theology. :) Just wanted to comment that the facts of the matter aren't nearly so irrational as you remembered them. Incidentally, it's not recorded that the man complained at the absence of the woman, either. Her creation was initiated by God, after God stated that it was not good for the man to be alone. (Which gets us into the further debate of whether he meant it wasn't good for any man to be single, or whether he meant it wasn't good for the first man to be alone because man would never reproduce. But you don't want to hear that.)
My mother, an earth science teacher, sat angrily through the last few years of asteroid-impact disaster movies making sounds of irritation whenever they stated factually that the dinosaurs were killed by an asteroid impact. Although that is the favored theory today, my understanding is that there is no consensus.
When I was a child they taught four or five different theories about the end of the dinosaurs; I can't even remember any of the others, now.
I was just explaining the advantage, not advocating. I'm not sure I've ever even touched an A4 paper.
Right, as any geek can tell you. Simple system, huh? :)
lol; well, I didn't say it was perfect. I just thought it was kind of neat. I'm an American, and not sure I ever touched an A4 paper, myself, actually.
You don't get it. It keeps going, recursively. Two A4's equal an A3, and two A3's equal an A2, and so on. The deal is that the paper is in such proportion that all A* papers are in the exact same proportion. That's not true if you double a 8 1/2 by 11. The proportion there is .77272, while the proportion for a doubled sheet, 11x17 is .647059.
I'm betting the Golden Ratio comes into A4 paper somehow; anyone want to comment?
I had that explained to me in person in an excellent, unrelated presentation at YAPC 2002 by Mark-Jason Dominus when he failed to follow his own advice.
I always used to want to be a math and computer science teacher. Events have changed, though, and I'm now married to a wonderful girl who was homeschooled. I'm still going to be a math and computer science teacher ... but for my own children. :)
Governments are created out of the collective will of the people.
Incidentally, that's a relatively recent phenomenon. In the past, governments were created when one small group conquered another, and then that group conquered another small group, etc. Governments were generally created by armed force. Only recently have we as a society delved into government of the people. And still the collective will you are discussing is a majority rule that may not be acceptable to the minority. Hitler arose in a democratic government, you know.
But in real life, people don't practice a "live and let live" policy, and that's why we have governments!
And what I am suggesting is that to secure my right to live and let live I have the authority to establish whatever kind of government I want with people willing to participate with me, and that to defend against me if I do not practice such a policy other people have the same right. Of course, this is not a new concept, the Declaration of Independence stated, "We hold these truths to be self-evident ... that they [men] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights ... That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." The only different thing I am proposing is that when a minority doesn't consent, they should have the right to opt-out and do whatever they wish (establish their organization, or whatever) ... so long as it's all voluntary and they practice live and let live. What I'm saying is that noone has the right to compel anyone to be part of their governmental system, which is basically what Thomas Jefferson said in the Declaration. He probably just never imagined a possibility of multiple governments being instituted in the same geographic area.
Part of the reason we probably don't see eye to eye on this is I view government as having an extraordinarily limited role. I view them as being established basically solely for the purpose of securing those unalienable rights to life and liberty. When a government goes out of control, be it the government I belong to or a government I do not, I assert that I have the right to institute a government to secure my rights and defend me against the rogue state.
This might be feasible, if every person in every one of those governments agrees to live by this system... which is brain-meltingly unlikely to happen. As soon as you get one rogue government which will stop at nothing to consolidate its power...
... you have a hundred governments fighting against it to defend the liberty of their citizens.
The answer to all of your objections is that the citizens in this society must as a whole desire their own liberty and be willing to fight for it. NO free form of government can compensate for a lack of that in its citizens.
Your scenario about the women being oppressed by the government they are not a part of is answered by the desire for liberty on the part of the government they are a part of, and the willingness to fight to defend it. We don't have militant Islam taking over in the United States right now because they know that is a hopeless battle; it will be lost because of our will and ability to fight. Our ability comes from our numbers. With suffient numbers of people willing to fight for liberty, oppressive governments will have to stick to oppressing their own citizens.
Unless, of course, those small governments band together in order to defeat that threat... which makes them into a single government for practical purposes.
Yep, and then they can separate again after the threat is eliminated, like the Allies in WWII. Or they can maintain an alliance like NATO, which does not make its members into a single government. They can do whatever they choose and whatever they deem necessary. An infinitely malleable system.