Then why do you insist on posting here, a veritable black hole of social lives?
Re:Ex-Military IT staff described in a nutshell.
on
The Living Dilbert?
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· Score: 1
Had it occurred to you that you're a tool, and by falling into the assinine "left vs. right" mindset, you're just allowing the people in power to dictate what you value?
Why do you hate America so much? Why do you want it to turn into Nazi Germany?
Social lives are, by their very nature, vapid, insignificant, and irrelevant. People live within small worlds. Why on earth would you judge them for it?
I don't like what you seem to be asserting here. If XBMC is any indication, it's completely possible for homebrew software to utterly pants anything released by a real developer.
They mention that it's unfortunate that there's no legal SDK for the xbox. This is mistaken, there is. OpenXDK isn't perfect, but I've been using it for a while in my quest to get my favourite compiler to create xbox executables natively.
Did anyone see the way he was acting towards those folks on GameFAQs when that kid committed suicide? He's nothing but human waste. In any other context, the right thinking individuals of the world would have lynched him for his disgusting behaviour, but he can hide behind a courtroom and an internet connection.
So? For that to have relevance relies on a notion that one ought to behave in a way that extends the longevity of their civilization. Most people when prodded, will admit that no part of their ethical or moral system demands this.
I'm not referring to passenger safety. When my father worked for a nuclear test reactor, he once accidentally broke a seal, and the air force had planes overhead within minutes. The Canadian air force, at that. There's no excuse for the Americans not to be able to at least match that at either the point that three planes were hijacked simultaneously, or the point where one of those hijacked planes runs at full throttle into a skyscraper.
To be fair, there's supposed to be stuff in place to stop hijacked planes, yet those planes managed to stay in the air and hit their targets without anything apparantly stopping them. I don't see how any reasonable person could be faulted for concluding that something shady was happening behind the scenes based on that knowledge alone.
Actually, the majority of the Federal debt was accrued under the Mulroney Conservatives. They didn't throw it into a hole either. They spent it on government services for the Canadian people.
But those who don't study history are doomed to look like useless trash.
As long as my great grandchildren are paying for debt from all that time we were UNDERtaxed, it is literally impossible for us to be OVERtaxed.
Your arguement is a complete red herring. The government sponsors research. Saying that when it makes exclusions it's ok because they never should have funded research in the first place is fallacious at best.
Simply stating "ok, so our ethics are based around utilitariansim now" doesn't seem to be a very strong arguement to me, especially since I maintain that you can't choose an ethical system without first finding a base upon which you can lay ethical foundations. There is no reason to prefer the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.
"The way you have framed things, the only way to be good would be to do good whilst wishing you weren't."
The only time a will to ethical behaviour is meaningful is when it's not the easy choice. It's easy to decide not to rape the little old lady walking to her bridge club. It's easy to decide to throw the change from paying for your Big Mac in the donation box. It's difficult to decide to make a real sacrifice with only your ethical principles as justification. When you do such a thing, and ironically, transcend mere utilitarianism by breaking the equation and doing something you don't want to do for very little reward, That's the moment that such principles actually mean something. I definitely argue that a meta-ethic is just as important as the ethic itself.
From the immediate point of view, it may seem that I'm being overly deontological, but the reason for this is that the ethical system itself determines the 'correct' moral decisions within its framework.
Anyway, the major problem with "feeling" morality is that there is no real line. Even a murderer can feel smugly moral, but analyzing the persons actions, you can immediately (under most ethical systems) go "wait! This guy feels all smug because he pays his bills and doesn't beat his wife and this and that, but the fact of the matter is, he killed an old lady because he wanted to know what it would feel like to rape a knifewound! He's not moral at all!".
This actually leads into my own ethical system: The primary premise of it being that our minds and emotions are inherently untrustworthy. Everything we "know" is just a model based on abstracted senses. There is actually no such thing as "red" or "blue" or "sweet tasting" or "high pitched noises" outside in the world. Our perception of these things is a result of the approximations required to send data to our brains, and each approximation is a fiction created because the process signal cannot be processed by the brain otherwise. The things we think we know are simply models of the real world we build to try to predict how things will run, based upon the only thing we can more or less objectively prove to exist consistently: The physical world. Just like a PC running Doom, the world inside our minds are built to emulate the world, and those emulations are irrelevant if the physical world turns out to be different. From this realization, I've built a system of things which can be said to have some measure of value, and from there, I've taken those values and translated them into ways I "ought" to behave. From there, morality follows. Because there is a framework in place, it is easy to question moral beliefs and check to see if they really are reasonable.
Without that framework, if you're just asking your gut if something ought to be done, your gut can tell you something wrong (because it's not actually an oracle), and you'd never know any better.
The comic was actually about how Captain Copyright used to be called Kaptain Kommnism, who warned kids that the mighty Stalin knew all, and would eventually find and destroy all traitors.
You are mistaken. Captain Copyright obviously doesn't use copyright LAW as the source of his powers, but copyright self righteous fiction. Since Gnu doesn't rely on the fictional parts of copyright, Gnuman would be in great shape as long as there is evil in the hearts of men.
Who cares? Except for the kids, who don't yet have souls and aren't yet human beings according to the law, these laws don't affect anyone who wants to play their games in peace...
Far from it. By acting "good" as a means of self-gratification, the base upon which "good" is derived becomes nihilistic and hedonistic. From this base, further ethical thought can't be logically reached, because morality becomes a search to "feel good" rather than "do what ought to be done".
One example of this would be soldiers in totalitarian regimes. The security of their position within the state will entice the 'feeling moralist' to think it is best to follow your duty with conviction, but a 'thinking moralist' will realize that no matter how good the security of their position is, by supporting a regime with incompotent leadership which bullies it's citizens, a larger number of people will be unhappy or dead, and by most ethical systems, this is unethical.
Thanks for the cliche. Too bad you were so mixed up in "Not buying" something I'm not selling that you missed the point entirely. In order to honestly continue to live under islamic-judeo-christian values after rejecting the underlying rationale for these values, you have to basically start from scratch. You don't have to do it because God is the source of the morals, but because God was the given justification for them, and the final arbiter of those values.
A scientific example: Let's say you assume phlogestin theory is correct, and fire is caused by a fluid inside all burnable materials. From there, you can determine many things, such as the fact that a burnable thing will not burn forever. You could derive a whole book of "facts" about fire using this theory. Now, if you decide that that theory of combustion is incorrect, you may still have many facts within your assertions based on the phlogestin model, but neither the facts nor the fallacies have any grounding anymore. After you decide upon modern combustion theory, you more or less have to start from scratch, because the phlogestin theories have nothing to do with the modern combustion model theories.
Similarly, you're free to follow the dogmatic morality left by religion, but in doing so, you don't have an honest ethical base. In effect, you're being moral because it makes you feel good to be moral, not for any reason. Aside from that, your morals, because they aren't based upon anything any longer, don't have a mechanism through which to evolve, except through the same "Doing it this way makes me feel good".
That said, I think it is possible, but not easy, to try to derive a value system on your own. I think I've done so for myself, for example.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll make you walk the plank, and you'll share a briney grave in Davey Jones' Locker!
Isn't it wonderful? They want to fight an ignored, unenforced, and unenforcable aspect of the law!
Can you say "token copyright reform"? Next thing, they'll be opposing the burning of witches!
Then why do you insist on posting here, a veritable black hole of social lives?
Had it occurred to you that you're a tool, and by falling into the assinine "left vs. right" mindset, you're just allowing the people in power to dictate what you value?
Why do you hate America so much? Why do you want it to turn into Nazi Germany?
Social lives are, by their very nature, vapid, insignificant, and irrelevant. People live within small worlds. Why on earth would you judge them for it?
I don't like what you seem to be asserting here. If XBMC is any indication, it's completely possible for homebrew software to utterly pants anything released by a real developer.
They mention that it's unfortunate that there's no legal SDK for the xbox. This is mistaken, there is. OpenXDK isn't perfect, but I've been using it for a while in my quest to get my favourite compiler to create xbox executables natively.
Are you sure? I've read her articles in the local newspaper, and she seems to just have a lot of fun being a jackass, but little else.
Oh noes! Teddy Kennedy had some scandal? I might CARE if I didn't care at all about what that fat fuck does!
Last mile != backbone.
Thank you and have a nice day.
That's an important thing that a lot of people seem to be missing.
Hitlers Holocaust? Stalins Purges? Maos Great Leap Forward? Before PONG.
Did anyone see the way he was acting towards those folks on GameFAQs when that kid committed suicide? He's nothing but human waste. In any other context, the right thinking individuals of the world would have lynched him for his disgusting behaviour, but he can hide behind a courtroom and an internet connection.
He's not even worthy of spitting on.
So? For that to have relevance relies on a notion that one ought to behave in a way that extends the longevity of their civilization. Most people when prodded, will admit that no part of their ethical or moral system demands this.
I'm not referring to passenger safety. When my father worked for a nuclear test reactor, he once accidentally broke a seal, and the air force had planes overhead within minutes. The Canadian air force, at that. There's no excuse for the Americans not to be able to at least match that at either the point that three planes were hijacked simultaneously, or the point where one of those hijacked planes runs at full throttle into a skyscraper.
To be fair, there's supposed to be stuff in place to stop hijacked planes, yet those planes managed to stay in the air and hit their targets without anything apparantly stopping them. I don't see how any reasonable person could be faulted for concluding that something shady was happening behind the scenes based on that knowledge alone.
Why bother allowing them to hold the cards? Nothing says the RIAA and MPAA are the only source of audio and visual entertainment.
Actually, the majority of the Federal debt was accrued under the Mulroney Conservatives. They didn't throw it into a hole either. They spent it on government services for the Canadian people.
But those who don't study history are doomed to look like useless trash.
As long as my great grandchildren are paying for debt from all that time we were UNDERtaxed, it is literally impossible for us to be OVERtaxed.
Your arguement is a complete red herring. The government sponsors research. Saying that when it makes exclusions it's ok because they never should have funded research in the first place is fallacious at best.
Embryos aren't the only source of stem cells.
But you knew that, right?
Simply stating "ok, so our ethics are based around utilitariansim now" doesn't seem to be a very strong arguement to me, especially since I maintain that you can't choose an ethical system without first finding a base upon which you can lay ethical foundations. There is no reason to prefer the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.
"The way you have framed things, the only way to be good would be to do good whilst wishing you weren't."
The only time a will to ethical behaviour is meaningful is when it's not the easy choice. It's easy to decide not to rape the little old lady walking to her bridge club. It's easy to decide to throw the change from paying for your Big Mac in the donation box. It's difficult to decide to make a real sacrifice with only your ethical principles as justification. When you do such a thing, and ironically, transcend mere utilitarianism by breaking the equation and doing something you don't want to do for very little reward, That's the moment that such principles actually mean something. I definitely argue that a meta-ethic is just as important as the ethic itself.
From the immediate point of view, it may seem that I'm being overly deontological, but the reason for this is that the ethical system itself determines the 'correct' moral decisions within its framework.
Anyway, the major problem with "feeling" morality is that there is no real line. Even a murderer can feel smugly moral, but analyzing the persons actions, you can immediately (under most ethical systems) go "wait! This guy feels all smug because he pays his bills and doesn't beat his wife and this and that, but the fact of the matter is, he killed an old lady because he wanted to know what it would feel like to rape a knifewound! He's not moral at all!".
This actually leads into my own ethical system: The primary premise of it being that our minds and emotions are inherently untrustworthy. Everything we "know" is just a model based on abstracted senses. There is actually no such thing as "red" or "blue" or "sweet tasting" or "high pitched noises" outside in the world. Our perception of these things is a result of the approximations required to send data to our brains, and each approximation is a fiction created because the process signal cannot be processed by the brain otherwise. The things we think we know are simply models of the real world we build to try to predict how things will run, based upon the only thing we can more or less objectively prove to exist consistently: The physical world. Just like a PC running Doom, the world inside our minds are built to emulate the world, and those emulations are irrelevant if the physical world turns out to be different. From this realization, I've built a system of things which can be said to have some measure of value, and from there, I've taken those values and translated them into ways I "ought" to behave. From there, morality follows. Because there is a framework in place, it is easy to question moral beliefs and check to see if they really are reasonable.
Without that framework, if you're just asking your gut if something ought to be done, your gut can tell you something wrong (because it's not actually an oracle), and you'd never know any better.
The problem is that the writers were trapped by not being able to write what they really wanted to write.
The comic was actually about how Captain Copyright used to be called Kaptain Kommnism, who warned kids that the mighty Stalin knew all, and would eventually find and destroy all traitors.
You are mistaken. Captain Copyright obviously doesn't use copyright LAW as the source of his powers, but copyright self righteous fiction. Since Gnu doesn't rely on the fictional parts of copyright, Gnuman would be in great shape as long as there is evil in the hearts of men.
Who cares? Except for the kids, who don't yet have souls and aren't yet human beings according to the law, these laws don't affect anyone who wants to play their games in peace...
Then you end up with what we like to call a "Mexican standoff".
In other words, mankind is inherantly good.
Far from it. By acting "good" as a means of self-gratification, the base upon which "good" is derived becomes nihilistic and hedonistic. From this base, further ethical thought can't be logically reached, because morality becomes a search to "feel good" rather than "do what ought to be done".
One example of this would be soldiers in totalitarian regimes. The security of their position within the state will entice the 'feeling moralist' to think it is best to follow your duty with conviction, but a 'thinking moralist' will realize that no matter how good the security of their position is, by supporting a regime with incompotent leadership which bullies it's citizens, a larger number of people will be unhappy or dead, and by most ethical systems, this is unethical.
Thanks for the cliche. Too bad you were so mixed up in "Not buying" something I'm not selling that you missed the point entirely. In order to honestly continue to live under islamic-judeo-christian values after rejecting the underlying rationale for these values, you have to basically start from scratch. You don't have to do it because God is the source of the morals, but because God was the given justification for them, and the final arbiter of those values.
A scientific example: Let's say you assume phlogestin theory is correct, and fire is caused by a fluid inside all burnable materials. From there, you can determine many things, such as the fact that a burnable thing will not burn forever. You could derive a whole book of "facts" about fire using this theory. Now, if you decide that that theory of combustion is incorrect, you may still have many facts within your assertions based on the phlogestin model, but neither the facts nor the fallacies have any grounding anymore. After you decide upon modern combustion theory, you more or less have to start from scratch, because the phlogestin theories have nothing to do with the modern combustion model theories.
Similarly, you're free to follow the dogmatic morality left by religion, but in doing so, you don't have an honest ethical base. In effect, you're being moral because it makes you feel good to be moral, not for any reason. Aside from that, your morals, because they aren't based upon anything any longer, don't have a mechanism through which to evolve, except through the same "Doing it this way makes me feel good".
That said, I think it is possible, but not easy, to try to derive a value system on your own. I think I've done so for myself, for example.