That's terrorism: the violence and the threat (do what you did to Assange, and you get hit again) is designed to counteract the political activity that harassed Assange, which makes it equally political action - that's terrorism.
By that definition of terrorism, most government activity (by almost any government) is terrorism. Every treaty has the threat of violence behind it, otherwise most actors wouldn't abide by it.
Well, electricity does travel slightly slower than light (physical electrons, which have mass, do move, although not from one end of the wire to the other). However, I suspect what they're after is improved switching speed. High frequency photons can switch on & off more sharply (i.e. in less time) than electrons in a typical electrical flow.
I keep thinking the same thing. Then remember that Hans Reiser had no powerful people who wanted him out of the way.
It's possible Assange is guilty of something despicable, but as yet I've heard no one even describe such a crime, much less provide any evidence that Assange is guilty.
When I was about 17 I had that same thought in what felt like a great epiphany at the time. My slant on it was that we necessarily remember in the direction of entropy... the notion of "why does time pass in one direction" is begging the question. Entropy will necessarily drift in one direction or another, and by definition we will experience time in the direction of increasing entropy.
Now, the question of why entropy was very low at one time is still worth asking, but asking why time passes or why only in one direction is as meaningful as the "one hand clapping" question.
It is a macro-scale (more or less) object that exhibits quantum properties in two dimensions, because the atoms are bound to their neighbors in a flat sheet. When the distances are less than the wavelength of the particles you're studying, they act in some ways as if that direction doesn't exist - i.e. it is not a "degree of freedom" in the system, a typical physics definition of a dimension.
Because he didn't know the depths of depravity he would see before taking it, and after he had it he felt pressured by "macho" assholes not to "whuss out" by proving he's a human with human reactions?
To use the web, I need to click random URLs from people I don't know. Yes, you need to look at page context and the URL to decide whether to click, and how large a grain of salt to take with the content. Every attempt I've seen at goatse-ing someone was calculated to make the context and URL innocuous.
"Teaching someone a lesson" is useful when the lesson is valuable. When the lesson is "no matter what the page context or URL look like, any link may take you somewhere horrifying", it's no lesson at all. It's just some asshole doing what he does best.
Being the thing you're warning someone about is not a public service.
Anyway, I've enjoyed debating this with you but I think our civilized, rational debate has gone too long and we may have violated/.'s TOS by doing so.;-)
I think that's a good point, and important to keep in mind, but...
In this particular example, he has made it likely that people will die. In fact, from any practical point of view, he has guaranteed it.
Let's take an analogous example from someone who is killing by action rather than inaction: if I give an LD50 dose of poison to 6 people, and three of them die, is it valid to argue that I was "leaving it to chance"?
I'm not sure I think intent matters. If you have reason to believe that someone with good intent will continue to kill people unnecessarily by incompetence, and someone else with evil intent will fail to kill people (either because they recognize they would be punished or perhaps because they are incompetent at being evil), which is the danger to society?
I know that's a contrived example, but it illustrates what is IMO the important question: do we regulate based on people's intent, or their effect on society?
It seems to me that although these arguments may get very complicated and fuzzy, the only rational basis for examining what is "good" is utilitarian ethics. Certainly it seems a society making judgments from utilitarian ethics will outperform another based on some alternative, where the measure of success is the same as the metric used in your utilitarian ethos.
It gets you a following which you can then turn into money by: * selling new material & merchandise online (the new way) or * playing concerts (the old way) or * both (the smart way).
Which of your examples do you think demonstrates a flaw in my assertion? Obviously people (including me) are not built to act from the heart on the ethical stance I'm talking about, but I see no reason someone in the position to easily stamp out malaria, but who chooses not to do so purely for reason of profit, is any less responsible for those deaths than if he killed them himself.
Of course, once you start discussing real world examples of that kind of situation, things get much more complicated: the CEO could argue that if he did such a thing, his company would fail and more lives would be lost from the company's future failure to act than would be lost from the current failure to act. And of course as soon as the argument becomes muddy like that, our natural self-interest bias kicks in and we convince ourselves that the course of action that best serves us is the most moral.
I am (to some degree) responsible for the deaths of people I've never met because I choose to buy a new car rather than buy an old one and donate the difference to, e.g., programs to provide clean water in Africa. I think there is some reasonable balance between living your life to do the most moral good and living your life to indulge yourself, but I don't think many people come close to the former. I know I don't, but I can face up to that rather than purport myself to be a good person when I know I am not.
I make irrational decisions regarding my willingness to "be good". Until I see a convincing argument to the contrary, though, I will continue to believe my decisions to be irrational rather than throw logic aside just because I can't bring myself to buck society and live according to the logic.
Of course, we are not built to be moral. We are built to breed and survive.
From a purely utilitarian point of view, executing anybody who is likely to consume more than they produce over the remainder of their life is a net-positive for society.
I don't think that's true at all. You can treat a human life as something with inherent value, greater than the value of anything else, and use utilitarian ethics to examine life and death issues.
Why is there blood on your hands if you support a law that lets a government employee kill an innocent, and not blood on your hands when you support a law that lets a criminal kill an innocent?
I know our gut tells us that when we act and it results in death it's worse than when we fail to act and it results in death, but I think our gut's wrong.
From a purely utilitarian point of view, any collision rate that is likely to save more victims (by executing the correct killer) than it kills (by executing the incorrect killer) is a net positive.
Which is not to say that you shouldn't try to continue to improve your negative failures (false acquittals) and positive failures (false convictions) after you reach that net positive point, but that's the time at which it makes sense to use the results of the evidential method by utilitarian ethics.
Size is a somewhat ambiguous concept. I *think* what's been discovered to be off by 4% is the radius of the charge distribution. If that's true, then the volume is off by more than 12%.
If the results of this experiment are accurate, it's a Big Deal.
Just to point out, sickle cell is common _because_ malaria is common. Having one copy of the recessive gene that causes sickle cell improves immune function against malaria.
So malaria disproportionally killed people who didn't have the sickle cell gene before they bred.
I agree with you that getting a sense of superiority because you caught someone else's mistake is itself a mistake. Discounting someone's argument because they made an error unrelated to the relevance or efficacy of the argument is likewise a mistake.
However, when someone points out an error and you take it as an insult, you are doing exactly what this research is telling you not to do. The *point* is that we need a willingness to make mistakes *and a willingness to learn from them*.
If you're unwilling to make mistakes, you're stodgy and won't grow. If you're unwilling to learn from them, you're foolish and won't grow.
Slashdot Mirror
That's terrorism: the violence and the threat (do what you did to Assange, and you get hit again) is designed to counteract the political activity that harassed Assange, which makes it equally political action - that's terrorism.
By that definition of terrorism, most government activity (by almost any government) is terrorism. Every treaty has the threat of violence behind it, otherwise most actors wouldn't abide by it.
Goddamit, I hate the way "No karma bonus" sticks until I turn it off again now.
Well, electricity does travel slightly slower than light (physical electrons, which have mass, do move, although not from one end of the wire to the other). However, I suspect what they're after is improved switching speed. High frequency photons can switch on & off more sharply (i.e. in less time) than electrons in a typical electrical flow.
s/Source Code Management/Software Configuration Management/g
I keep thinking the same thing. Then remember that Hans Reiser had no powerful people who wanted him out of the way.
It's possible Assange is guilty of something despicable, but as yet I've heard no one even describe such a crime, much less provide any evidence that Assange is guilty.
When I was about 17 I had that same thought in what felt like a great epiphany at the time. My slant on it was that we necessarily remember in the direction of entropy... the notion of "why does time pass in one direction" is begging the question. Entropy will necessarily drift in one direction or another, and by definition we will experience time in the direction of increasing entropy.
Now, the question of why entropy was very low at one time is still worth asking, but asking why time passes or why only in one direction is as meaningful as the "one hand clapping" question.
And impossible to prove that he hasn't forgotten his password.
Given that the frist post on that story was by a user with a 6 digit UID, I'm guessing you would still have a 6 digit UID had you registered then.
It is a macro-scale (more or less) object that exhibits quantum properties in two dimensions, because the atoms are bound to their neighbors in a flat sheet. When the distances are less than the wavelength of the particles you're studying, they act in some ways as if that direction doesn't exist - i.e. it is not a "degree of freedom" in the system, a typical physics definition of a dimension.
I write comments as a first step to implementing a method. I write out the flow, then go back and implement in between the comments.
It helps me with thinking through the design, and I end up with documentation that I know reflects what the code says at an appropriate level.
No one has recommended gcompris?
Free software is made of win.
Because he didn't know the depths of depravity he would see before taking it, and after he had it he felt pressured by "macho" assholes not to "whuss out" by proving he's a human with human reactions?
To use the web, I need to click random URLs from people I don't know. Yes, you need to look at page context and the URL to decide whether to click, and how large a grain of salt to take with the content. Every attempt I've seen at goatse-ing someone was calculated to make the context and URL innocuous.
"Teaching someone a lesson" is useful when the lesson is valuable. When the lesson is "no matter what the page context or URL look like, any link may take you somewhere horrifying", it's no lesson at all. It's just some asshole doing what he does best.
Being the thing you're warning someone about is not a public service.
Agreed on all counts :-)
I think that's a good point, and important to keep in mind, but...
In this particular example, he has made it likely that people will die. In fact, from any practical point of view, he has guaranteed it.
Let's take an analogous example from someone who is killing by action rather than inaction: if I give an LD50 dose of poison to 6 people, and three of them die, is it valid to argue that I was "leaving it to chance"?
I'm not sure I think intent matters. If you have reason to believe that someone with good intent will continue to kill people unnecessarily by incompetence, and someone else with evil intent will fail to kill people (either because they recognize they would be punished or perhaps because they are incompetent at being evil), which is the danger to society?
I know that's a contrived example, but it illustrates what is IMO the important question: do we regulate based on people's intent, or their effect on society?
It seems to me that although these arguments may get very complicated and fuzzy, the only rational basis for examining what is "good" is utilitarian ethics. Certainly it seems a society making judgments from utilitarian ethics will outperform another based on some alternative, where the measure of success is the same as the metric used in your utilitarian ethos.
It gets you a following which you can then turn into money by:
* selling new material & merchandise online (the new way)
or
* playing concerts (the old way)
or
* both (the smart way).
Which of your examples do you think demonstrates a flaw in my assertion? Obviously people (including me) are not built to act from the heart on the ethical stance I'm talking about, but I see no reason someone in the position to easily stamp out malaria, but who chooses not to do so purely for reason of profit, is any less responsible for those deaths than if he killed them himself.
Of course, once you start discussing real world examples of that kind of situation, things get much more complicated: the CEO could argue that if he did such a thing, his company would fail and more lives would be lost from the company's future failure to act than would be lost from the current failure to act. And of course as soon as the argument becomes muddy like that, our natural self-interest bias kicks in and we convince ourselves that the course of action that best serves us is the most moral.
I am (to some degree) responsible for the deaths of people I've never met because I choose to buy a new car rather than buy an old one and donate the difference to, e.g., programs to provide clean water in Africa. I think there is some reasonable balance between living your life to do the most moral good and living your life to indulge yourself, but I don't think many people come close to the former. I know I don't, but I can face up to that rather than purport myself to be a good person when I know I am not.
I make irrational decisions regarding my willingness to "be good". Until I see a convincing argument to the contrary, though, I will continue to believe my decisions to be irrational rather than throw logic aside just because I can't bring myself to buck society and live according to the logic.
Of course, we are not built to be moral. We are built to breed and survive.
I don't think that's true at all. You can treat a human life as something with inherent value, greater than the value of anything else, and use utilitarian ethics to examine life and death issues.
Why is there blood on your hands if you support a law that lets a government employee kill an innocent, and not blood on your hands when you support a law that lets a criminal kill an innocent?
I know our gut tells us that when we act and it results in death it's worse than when we fail to act and it results in death, but I think our gut's wrong.
For more interesting variations, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem
From a purely utilitarian point of view, any collision rate that is likely to save more victims (by executing the correct killer) than it kills (by executing the incorrect killer) is a net positive.
Which is not to say that you shouldn't try to continue to improve your negative failures (false acquittals) and positive failures (false convictions) after you reach that net positive point, but that's the time at which it makes sense to use the results of the evidential method by utilitarian ethics.
Lucky bastard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_J._Campana,_Jr.
Making your link link to the site it says, for those too lazy to cut-n-paste.
Size is a somewhat ambiguous concept. I *think* what's been discovered to be off by 4% is the radius of the charge distribution. If that's true, then the volume is off by more than 12%.
If the results of this experiment are accurate, it's a Big Deal.
Just to point out, sickle cell is common _because_ malaria is common. Having one copy of the recessive gene that causes sickle cell improves immune function against malaria.
So malaria disproportionally killed people who didn't have the sickle cell gene before they bred.
I agree with you that getting a sense of superiority because you caught someone else's mistake is itself a mistake. Discounting someone's argument because they made an error unrelated to the relevance or efficacy of the argument is likewise a mistake.
However, when someone points out an error and you take it as an insult, you are doing exactly what this research is telling you not to do. The *point* is that we need a willingness to make mistakes *and a willingness to learn from them*.
If you're unwilling to make mistakes, you're stodgy and won't grow. If you're unwilling to learn from them, you're foolish and won't grow.
Hrm, that still sounds like a restatement of what I said.