If net neutrality passes, what if I need a connection with QoS (quality of service) for two-way video or VOIP communication?
In order to implement QoS in a workable way, my packets need priority. But if my packets need priority, that's not "neutral". And it seems like network neutrality is designed to prevent me from buying any kind of QoS from network providers.
How is this a good thing?
Two things:
1) Net neutrality doesn't imply that no prioritization of packets is happening, only that no prioritization is done based on the origin of those packets. E.g. Verizon et al can prioritize voice or video streams coming across their network over web traffic, but it can't prioritize Google web packets over MSN web packets, or Skype voice packets over Vonage voice packets, etc. So you can still buy QoS for various services over your connection, but you can't pay more to prioritize your particular traffic over their network, as opposed to your competitors' traffic, except inasmuch as you're paying for a faster connection than your competitors are.
Which brings us to the second point...
2) If you need a guaranteed quality of service between two particular points, you'll need to buy high-end connections at both ends anyway, net neutrality or none. If you've got a high-bandwidth line with QoS for video traffic, and I've got my dinky home DSL connection with no such QoS (other than what my ISP might apply standard), I'm not going to get the full quality of your full-screen streaming video feed.
So you can still buy two high-speed uplinks to the network and even prioritize certain kinds of traffic over those connections to get a high-speed video conference going. And you can buy a faster connection on your end if you need to send out traffic faster. But you can't bribe the network to give your traffic higher priority than your competitors to me, the typical home user.
While I don't disagree much with your point, I would add that I, and many other people, expect certain things from the government beyond liberty and security. I expect that garbage be collected - I don't mind if it's subcontracted and if there's a fee (though I'd rather that was covered in income tax, as benefits the truely poor), but if there's no service, there will be serious public health issues.
That brings me on to something else I consider a requirement from the government. Healthcare. I don't believe that the poorest people in society should be unable to get medical care because they can't afford it. Finally, I'd passionately despise any government that withdrew manditory public education.
But, hey, as long as there aren't riots in the street, and you can carry guns and smoke pot, none of the rest really matters, does it?
I'd actually include a lot of that within the realm of freedom and safety; mostly under safety. Though I don't directly support government-run tax-paid services, I am in favor of some significant redistribution of wealth, and I have no problem with groups of people, though their governments, running various sorts of businesses like schools and hospitals and garbage disposal agencies, though those businesses would have to compete with other similar businesses. The redistribution of wealth would see to it that the poor can afford those businesses (or their competitors) about as well as the wealthy, or rather, that the difference between poor and wealthy isn't so much that businesses can price things with broad demand so exorbitantly.
If you're wondering how this falls under "safety", let me explain. I consider both interpersonal issues and economic/ecological issues (those dealing with resources) under both freedom and safety. Interpersonal freedom is your right to generally do what you want and disallow others from doing things unto you that you don't want; this is a right to liberty. Economic freedom is your right to possess things and disallow others from doing things to your possessions that you don't want; this is a right to property.
Those are both "negative rights". Safety invokes "positive" rights. Interpersonal safety, or the right to security, is your right to be rescued from a dangerous situation, which means both a casual duty for individual bystanders to do something to help those in danger and not to create a dangerous situation (firing guns at random in crowds, setting brush fires, etc); and a formal duty for governments to protect those in danger by providing emergency services - police, fire, etc. Economic safety, or the right to charity, is your right to be given to in times of need, which means both a casual duty for individuals to help those who need it and not to depreciate public resources (i.e. damaging the environment, etc), and a formal duty for governments to give to those in need by redistributing wealth. The point of the wealth redistribution is not some sort of communist flat equality though; it is to provide a stable market so that capitalism will function optimally, ensuring prices will be set fairly. It is for defense of the marketplace against market failure.
The specific method I envision for this is simple: take half of everybody's income, pool that, and redistribute it equally. The end effect of this is a progressive tax/welfare scale whereby those with exactly average incomes pay no taxes (unless gov't is operating at a loss) and get no welfare (unless gov't is operating at a profit), while those who make significantly more are taxed more, and those who make significantly less receive more welfare. If you have a healthy market with roughly equal players, almost no money will be redistributed. If you have massive market failure where some people are in disproportionately powerful bargaining positions, then you will have the wealthy being taxed massively and the poor being given a big hand up. But the system will never force complete equality, for the more equal people become the less center-ward pressure is applie
I think you missed the point I was making. I understand liberal democracy and agree with it. It is not the government's job to force some people's values on other people. It's the government's job to keep people from forcing their values on each other. It's the government's job to make sure people are safe and free. It does this by enforcing rights and responsibilities on people. But the reason why it enforces rights and responsibilities is because that *is* what's best for the country. You can't just will some good state of affairs into being; you have to attempt to achieve it through some action, and there's a probability of going awry with every action. The point of enforcing rights and responsibilities is to guarantee that overall, better things tend to come about than they otherwise would if you didn't hold people to their duty.
But what I was trying to get across in my original post was that morality _ISN'T_ just some set of common values. That's like saying that reality is just a set of common beliefs. In some lesser sense you could use the words to mean "common values" or "common beliefs", e.g. "the morality/reality of such-and-such culture is ________", in an anthropological, descriptive sense. But the same way that it doesn't make sense to say that what actually is real changes from culture to culture, or that the world may be round here in California but flat in some backwards luddite society in Nebraska, it makes no sense that what is actually moral changes from culture to culture either. What people believe and what people value changes, and those beliefs and values reflect what people THINK is real or moral, but they mustn't be mistaken for what is actually real or actually moral. That's why the most moral thing to do is to live according to your values and let others live according to theirs, and avoid stepping on each other's toes, so to speak. That way everybody gets what they value as best as possible.
Ethics is the study of what is right and what is wrong; the study of morality. Political science just is applied ethics. And actual government is, of course, applied political science. So morality is the goverment's job. But since morality is not just common values, forcing some particular set of common values on people is not the government's job. Back to the original topic: this anti-game legislation is not the government enforcing morality. It's the government enforcing value. It's not the government looking out for people's freedom and safety, protecting them from one another and allowing them to pursue what they value; it's the government helping one group against others, and telling them what they should value. That's not moral. That's not the government's job.
I'm a little confused about the moderation this post is getting. Thank you three for the Insightfuls, but why the Flamebait and Overrated? Someone obviously finds this offensive somehow... but I don't rightly see how. People just modding down because they disagree?
But you do have a point, except for the fact that morality (which is what this law entails) is NOT part of the government's job.
I must strongly disagree with your words here (and with the many others who espouse them), though I agree completely in spirit. Enforcing morality is the government's ONLY job. But morality is not synonymous with any particular group's common tastes or traditional values. Morality is about what is good for the everybody, and that is precisely what government's legitimate purpose is: to look out for the well-being of all of society.
But what is good for the everybody is a very small set of things: liberty and security. Any of the particulars (i.e. watching porn, eating red meat, having long hair, wearing shoes, whatever) may be good or bad for different people in different contexts, but freedom and safety are the two things that are always good for everyone. With those provided, people are free to acquire all the things that are good for them in particular and avoid those which are bad.
Which means that the government's job, as I think you were saying, is to mind it's own business, that business being making sure that other people are minding theirs. It is not the government's job to enforce the tastes or personal values of any people on any other people.
Premise 1: The universe is "everything that exists", i.e. whatever it is that exists, summed up together, is the universe.
Premise 2: God is "the greatest thing that exists", i.e. God is not merely a part of some greater thing; nothing subsumes God.
Therefore God cannot coherently be something IN the universe, for to do so would contradict premise 2 (God being a part of something, while God is by definition not subsumed by anything).
But also, God cannot coherently be outside the universe, for that would contradict premise 1 (something existing outside the universe, while the universe by definition subsumes all that exists).
So any use of the term "God" to mean something other than just "the universe" is incoherent and such a "God" cannot therefore be real. So to coherently hold that such a greatest-of-all-beings "God" exists, one must equate such a God with the Universe. And back on topic, the investigation of the universe is just the investigation of God, as the old natural philosophers (aka scientists) said all along.
Of course, one could then question what kinds of things can be said to "exist" (e.g. are there "immaterial substances"?), but that's just what the scientific method addresses: the use of logic and experience to determine what does or even could exist.
And of course, if you want to mean something different by "the universe" (e.g. the "known universe" or the "local universe" or "this plane of reality" or whatever), or by "God" (e.g. some really powerful bearded guy flying around space shooting lightning bolts and such), then all this is null and void. But given the standard philosophical definitions of "the universe" and "God" used throughout western history, it seems pretty conclusive that the two must be one and the same.
We're the only species on this planet ever to develop art and science, the only species capable of understanding something about their existance and the nature of the universe, hell the only species to be able to look beyond day-to-day survival, and plan for something greater....and you think we "suck".
I said we've got our good points. Those are the good points. I think the reason I'm so down on mankind is because we *are* capable of all that and yet seem to underutilize it so much, because on top of all that genius we're so dysfunctional, which is a disgusting problem in itself and also holds back our full potential. That waste and dysfunction is what sickens me about mankind.
It's the same reason I'm down on myself so much. I've been told my entire life that I'm some sort of genius who can do anything he wants, with all this potential, and by some standards I'm actualizing it - I've got good friends, and a wonderful girl I've been with for almost three years who I hope to marry once I'm out of college, and it's looking like I'll be coming out of school with a Master's degree not only out of debt but maybe with a few grand in the bank to boot, having worked up to all of this after coming from a below-poverty-level family and being a friendless loser most of my childhood. It's taken a lot of work to get here, and a lot of inborn gifts and fortunate circumstances too. But I've also got serious mental problems that hurt myself and others, and I can't help but be down on myself for letting that kind of crap get in the way of the kind of success I could have, not only doing great things for myself but having a great impact on the world. I feel like I'm supposed to accomplish something spectacular, and that my dysfunctionality is spoiling that potential.
Likewise, mankind is capable of so much great art and science and we've done a lot with it considering where we came from, but seeing where we could go if we weren't so screwed up is maddening. I guess in some sense I'm so optimistic it turns to pessimism when those great expectations aren't met. Which is why I used to say to expect nothing, even while striving for the greatest heights... that way you'll always be pleasantly surprised at your successes and never disappointed by your failures, and always have as much of the former and as little of the latter as possible. That's what I used to say at least. If only I were capable of taking my own advice.
The problem is, what they're really saying is "humanity sucks, except for me".
Maybe a lot of people are, but not everyone.
I think most of humanity sucks. But I think I suck too. Doesn't mean I think either myself or humanity deserves to be destroyed just now. We've all got our good points along with our bad. The question is whether the good outweighs the bad, and that is a question left for history to decide.
If I'm really such a horrible person I'll wind up suffering the consequences of that sooner or later. If I'm bad enough I might end up dead because of it. I know at the least that I'm not perfect and will die eventually. But considering just within normal human limits, if there are no bad consequences of my behavior and everything turns out OK, then I'm either not as horrible as I thought I was, or I am but it's tolerable levels of badness, only possible by virtue of the good of others around me mitigating those consequences.
Same deal with humanity. If we blow ourselves up - either Earth, the galaxy, or whatever - well then in hindsight, we deserved it. Maybe not each of us as individuals, but as a society or species, yeah. Doesn't mean we *ought* to blow ourselves up now. We ought to try to be as good and successful a society/species as we possibly can in order to avoid such a fate. Maybe we'll fail to do so. Maybe we *would* fail to do so if not for some benevolent alien race out there who will save our asses from our own dysfunction. Who knows. History will tell. All we can do is try.
When I was younger I used to have a saying, one that I wish I could bring myself to apply in my life today:
"Plan for the worst. Strive for the best. Expect nothing."
Yes and no. Absolutism, as in an absolute truth, does exist. The problem arrises when you try to define one.
Absolutely. Er... no pun intended.
I agree completely that it's incoherent to hold any notion that equates to "there is no [objective] truth". But I wouldn't say that believing that there IS an objective truth is absolutism. I'd reserve that term for any position which claims itself to BE the ultimate truth, denying the subjectivity of the authors and supporters of such a position.
In short, absolutism is the denial of subjectivity, while relativism is the denial of objectivity. A rational, empirical, philosophic, scientific approach can't do either of these: it must acknowledge the fact that there is an objective measure of reality (and, back on subject, morality too), while also acknowledging the subjectivity of any individuals investigating and deliberating such things.
I couldn't quite follow what you were getting at about standards outside the context of discussion... but this notion of having to combine objectivity and subjectivity in order to avoid absolutism or relativism is closely related to why reason and philosophy and science all rely on a combination of logic and experience, and why that just is the universal standard.
Logic is all about objectivity, and the only facts which can be stated with absolute certainty are, as you say, simple logical truths: "not (P and not P)" is absolutely true always and everywhere because it can't conceivably be false. Conversely, experience is entirely subjective. I can't share my experience with you like I can share logical propositions with you. At best I can give a rough description, and you can try to reconstruct that experience in your mind and compare it to experiences of your own. So experience can only be agreed upon by consensus, and as such it's a very relative thing.
But if you combine these things, and try to construct some logical, mathematical formulae as though they were absolute truths, in such a way that they explain your experiences, but always keep open to the possibility of further experiences invalidating those old theories and requiring new ones, and never relying on anything which is in principle beyond experience, then you should continually get closer and closer to the complete "absolute truth" - though until you've experienced everything (which is certainly infeasible if not logically impossible), you'll never actually get there.
And that's all that the scientific method is: you observe something, explain it with a theory, follow that theory to it's logical conclusions, and then look to see if those conclusions actually match your experience. Lather, rinse, repeat. All this can be derived just from noting the faults of both absolutism and relativism, and it can be applied to pretty much everything. So long as you take a naturalist position on ethics, such that ethical and moral facts just consist of some sort of facts about people and the world (and aren't some kind of weird, inexperiencable and non-logically-derivable "facts"), then it applies just as much to ethics, and can be used to compare and contrast ethical systems between cultures without resorting to imperial absolutism or cultural relativism.
I'm marking the both of you as friends for the same reasons - I come here for good debate. For dialectic really, which both of you seem to appreciate.
(Wow, why does this remind me of that "I cast a friendship spell on both of you!" bit from the Dead Alewives D&D spoof?).
Anyway, I just wanted to chime in on one small part of your conversation:
I have always found the relative/absolute to be a circular argument, which is why it is so hard to discuss. In order for us to do it any justice, and not go around in circles, we would first have to establish a scale to discuss the topic on. Your statements about relative absolutism couldn't be more true. Absolute is relative to something.
This is something I've been thinking a lot about lately, regarding "postmodernism" and it's "anti-Enlightenment" stance against science and rationality as universals. A recent discussion about the "post-modern period" versus the "modern period" made me realize that society doesn't swing back and forth between absolutist and relativist periods, like you might expect; one coming as the backlash to the other and then later vice-versa. It seems to me that it swings back and forth between periods of BOTH absolutism and relativism simultaneously, and periods of moderation.
In ancient times you had the religious state telling people what was real or moral in absolutes, but at the same time you had people like the Sophists who use "reason" (rhetoric) to convince people that they were right, while telling themselves that there really is no right or wrong besides what you can convince people is right or wrong. Then came Socrates and the whole philosophical movement and people started using reason and observation to question everything and see which ideas held up and what other ideas must follow from those ones; regardless of whether that conforms with what anybody previously believes. Then Rome fell and the Dark Ages came and people turned more to dogmatic religious absolutism. (I'm not really aware of any major relativist groups in Western civilization during the Dark Ages but it wouldn't surprise me to find them). And then came the Enlightenment and the renewal of using reason and observation - the scientific method - and the investigation of secular theories of ethics, deontological and utilitarian theories, things which started with questions like "what does it mean for something to be good? by what standard can we tell if something is good or not?", rather than a list of what things are good or bad in particular. And now we seem to be entering another period of religious absolutism and postmodern relativism again... sigh.
Introspecting on this, it dawned on me that relativism and absolutism come together because both arise from a lack epistemological and meta-ethical standards for investigating what particular ideas are real or unreal, and what particular deeds are moral or immoral. Instead they both rely on something being right (in either the sense of "true" or "good") simply because someone believes it; and the only difference between them is whose beliefs matter to them. To the absolutist, what I believe is right, and it must be, because I believe it. To the relativist, nothing is right, or, well, everything is right, because just look around and you'll see that people believe all these different things. Neither position allows for the comparison and critique of one set of ideas against another.
The analogy which occurred to me is that of measuring weights. In this analogy, ideas, theories, worldviews, explanations, religions, what have you... are all visualized as various physical objects or bundles of objects. The absolutist has his thing or his bundle of things and declares that it is the heaviest thing around, and nothing could possibly weigh more than this; and any claims to the contrary are summarily ignored. The relativist says, "well, everything weighs something, I mean look at all these different things, they're all kinda heavy, they don't just float around by themselves, people
The stock market mas made public corporations more short-term than most humans - managers' pay and evaluation are linked to very short term fluctuations in stock price.
Right, that's what I meant. The owners of the company (the stockholders) don't mind demanding things that kill the corporation off eventually (for varying values of "eventually") so long as it makes them rich right now. They can go invest in and kill off another corp later. They're nothing but parasites, and if it weren't for the hard work of other people they'd drag the whole world down with them. Who knows, maybe they will anyway...
I think there are several reasons that people (and the people that run companies) do the wrong thing.
They don't see the long-term benefits of doing the right thing. They mistakenly value short-term over long-term. (There's scientific data that shows that this is the case in general, even when it's clearly irrational.) They're lazy.
All of these really come down to being short-sighted, or at least, to acting short-sightedly (i.e. one may realize that something will be of long-term detriment but the short-term benefits are overwhelmingly compelling). Either a lack of consciousness of a lack of willpower can bring this about. I know for me it's certainly the willpower problem most of the time... I'm acutely conscious that many things I do are shortsighted and wrong, but can't seem to make myself do otherwise.
They don't think they'll get caught.
This one I don't think fits in though. Bad acts aren't just bad because of the consequences that arise from other people not liking them. They're bad because they have consequences in an of themselves which, were it not for the good deeds of others counteracting them, would be bad for the actor. Polluting the environment is bad because you need the environment to be clean in order to survive; in small portions the effects may not be noticeable but nevertheless, if you did that a lot, or if a lot of people did that, there would be negative effects, regardless of whether anybody thought the act itself was wrong.
Sloth (as in excessive laziness, being an unproductive leech; not the good kind of efficiency-maximizing laziness) is bad because it depletes the resources you need to survive without producing any more. If everybody in the world were suddenly to stop working and rest on their asses and live off of what's already been produced - even if nobody thought that was wrong, if nobody thought stealing was wrong and people could just take whatever resources were out there - then we would still eventually starve to death, whether or not anyone thought the sloth leading to that situation was wrong.
Likewise, harming other people or society is wrong because you have a better chance of surviving in civilization (provided that civilization is not overtly hostile or dangerous to you in some way) than all alone out in the woods. Even neglecting the direct risk of assault that would arise if everyone were to disregard each other's well-being, even if it was only YOU harming other people, if you did it enough you would wind up destroying civilization, putting you all alone in the world; and while you may enjoy being away from other people (I know I certainly do), it's still better for you, in terms of your chances of survival, to have the safety net of society there, so long as society isn't perverted such that it's causing more harm to it's members than good.
Which segues nicely into the notion that the social harm and benefit thing goes even further than immediate benefits to you during your life. If you look at the trend of all of this, good behaviors are those which tend to perpetuate systems that behave in those ways, and bad behaviors are those which tend to terminate the systems that behave in those ways. It's really quite evolutionary: those patterns which reproduce, propagate, or otherwise perpetuate themselves will keep on going, and those that don't will fail. With simple biology the patterns are those which are dictated by DNA, and the systems which manifest those patterns in action are biological organisms. With sociology the patterns are the customs, traditions, laws, moral and ethical beliefs, and other sorts of behavior-guiding concepts of the people of a society, and the systems are the social organizations themselves.
So if you consider that all people must eventually die, it seems that if survival is the ultimate point of morality then there is no point, because you are going to die eventually no matter what. But if you look beyond your own personal survival, you can see that the patterns which const
I'm a little tired of this constant false distinction between what's good for business and what's moral or ethical. The way I see it, what's moral or ethical is just so *because* it is good for your survival in the longest, broadest consideration of things.
I like to use a swimming analogy. We're all in an infinite sea, with no shores and no bottom. To stay afloat (alive), you've got to do something that keeps you from sinking. The obvious answer here is "swim!", but consider that you could also hang off of a couple other people, or if you've got dense enough masses of people around, climb on top of them and get yourself clear out of the water. In this analogy, swimming is doing anything good and productive that keeps you afloat. A lone swimmer not near anyone else would be like a subsistence farmer. Helping those who can't swim, holding them up (so long as you're not drowning yourself), is doing a supererogatory deed, going beyond the call of duty to do good. Hanging off of other people is bad (though their helping to keep you up is good), and walking all over them is clearly bad.
But why are those things good or bad? Simple: if everyone were to hang off of everyone else, and nobody was swimming, we'd all drown. Morals are by definition meant to be universal codes of behavior, so something is immoral if and only if, if everyone were to do that, the results would be bad. It follows from this that the only reason anyone ever does anything immoral is because they're being short-sighted: walking all over people seems good for you in the short term, but in the big picture you're giving yourself a small gain at the expense of an overall greater loss across the whole mass of people, including yourself. If everyone were to do that you'd be screwed; the only reason it seems good at all in the short term is by virtue of all those hard-working swimmers you're walking over.
The thing I don't quite get is that, while humans have an excuse to be short-sighted since the shit quite often won't hit the fan within their lifetime, corporations are potentially immortal and so I'd think that they would be the longest-planning, most moral entities around, looking out for the economic well-being of the world. In some sense they are, with the pervasive pressure from above for the working class to work harder, but the strongest leadership is by example, and the more people and corporations we have making it rich by riding over others, the more the next generation is going to avoid working if at all possible to try and be a rich corporate executive and/or shareholder instead... and then, once enough people are resting comfortably on the shoulders of a few exhausted swimmers, they'll all drown; or at least, once those swimmers drown, or throw the fatasss freeriders off, they'll all have to start swimming again.
I guess the answer is that corporations are still being run by humans, which are usually short-sighted creatures, and who don't care if their corporations die eventually so long as it makes them rich in the short term. But maybe, to bring it back on topic, some people aren't so short-sighted and want to do something that will last beyond their own lives. I know I certainly do; to establish an enduring legacy, make some long-lasting positive impact on the world, is the closest thing to immortality anyone can achieve. Maybe the folks in charge of Google want that too. And they've actually got an opportunity here to do so. So don't discount all claims of morality out-of-hand by saying that they're only driven by profit. It can be both, and must be both if you're looking at the longest long run, which all of these immortal corporations ought to be doing.
So, out of curiosity, you'd be morally ok with a diner owned and operated by a smoker and his smoker wife, with no other employees, where patron smoking is allowed. (As long as there's a sign on the door: "WARNING: SMOKING ALLOWED. Enter at your own risk. No children under 18.)
I'm not so sure about that, because a restaurant is still the public space of a private business, like a storefront is, and I would generally ban smoking in public on the basis (as I said before) that while in hindsight if nobody minded the act it was fine, in foresight we have to act on principles that will generally tend to avoid wrongdoing. If someone acts against those principles and nobody minds, then nobody's going to complain and so the law won't be enforced, which allows for such consensual exceptions, but encourages general compliance with the law to avoid possibly running afoul of it.
My main concern is that, due to public sentiments about smoking, this will lead to most or many restaurants allowing smoking. Some part of me wants to say "just let the market sort it out; if enough people hate smoking those businesses will fail", but that seems like it allows majority (smoker) sentiment to override minority (non-smoker) rights. It reminds me of racial discrimination: it's fine for you to keep people from entering your private home on the basis on their race or anything you want, but you can't have a Whites Only restaurant because you're violating people's rights. In the same way, you can keep your house as disgusting as you like (so long as there's not kids being endangered by it), but you can't maintain a polluted public space of a business for the same reasons you can't pollute the truly public spaces outside.
So yeah, I'm not 100% sure about this case, but in general I'd want to say that public spaces of businesses are subject to the same rules as truly public places are. A private club, which discriminates on who it allows inside and such, is basically the same case as a private residence and they can allow smoking all they want. But anywhere that is ostensibly open to the public at large, like storefronts and restaurants, should be treated as a public spaces.
First of all, thank you for not taking offense at my last post. This is a very touchy subject for me and I kind of tend to fly off the handle a bit. Because of a lot of hostile reactions from smokers to polite requests in the past - and growing up having such a person for a father - I now generally assume anyone defensive of "smoker's rights" is an ass. I guess being strung out on nicotine is to blame for that. But you don't seem to be an ass, and that's a nice change of pace.
I'm not defending the right to smoke indoors unless it's a private home, though I personally think that, unless it's a place where you *have* to go like a courthouse or the DMV, it should really be up to the employees and owners.
Right, and like I said, I don't think there should be laws against smoking in your own home, or allowing others to smoke there, with the exception of the impact it has on children who don't really have the option of just not visiting those places if it bothers them.
Outdoors is a different story - smoke dissipates pretty quickly. (Whereas urine doesn't, and tends to make the shoes of whomever steps in it smell pissy.) I'm sorry, but walking through an occasional smoky area isn't going to kill you nor shorten your lifespan materially.
Walking down almost any street in a decently populated area, I regularly run into many clouds of cigarette smoke coming from other people on the street. I disagree that urine is any worse - I think people are just desensitized to smoke in our culture. I can smell it on people who walk into a room, or even smell it on my own clothes if I've been in a smoky area (even outdoors), as much as I could smell urine on someone.
And the issue isn't whether a little of it will shorten my life span or any such significant effects. The issue is that there's a reason why our senses are naturally averse to the smell or urine or smoke - because excessive expose to them can be harmful. Walking around and poking people with your fingers isn't going to significantly harm them but it can still get you arrested for assault, because you're doing something to someone that causes them discomfort against their will.
No pollution, on an individual level, is really all that bad. But it needs to be condemned in every individual case because all together, if everybody did it, things would get pretty bad. Walking down a street full of smokers is no less gross to me than walking down a street covered in urine, and I walk around barefoot a lot so that's saying something.
If you're so concerned about second-hand smoke, I guess you support banning all public fireworks, outlawing barbecues and fireplaces down the shore, banning deep-fried foods (after all, some smoke might escape through the kitchen vent fan), and stopping all diesel trains. All of those things make smoke that's just as bad for you as cigg. smoke. Remember, though, it's the dose that makes the poison. If you don't sit in smokefilled rooms regularly or smoke a lot, it's unlikely to give you cancer.
Like you say, it's the dose that makes the poison, and I'm willing to grant some leeway to the same extent that I am other pollutants. I don't care if someone way out in the middle of nowhere pees behind a bush, or if someone who hiked to the top of some mountain a hundred miles from anywhere enjoys a victory cigarette. If someone's really sure that no one is going to be impacted by what they do, then that's OK in retrospect. I don't care if someone takes a leak in their own back yard, so long as it doesn't run under the fence into mine; likewise I don't care if someone smokes in their back yard either, so long as it doesn't blow over the fence into mine. Same thing with barbecues, fireworks, deep friers and diesel trucks - so long as it's not blowing in anybody's face, no harm done.
My standard for this, like all things, is that so long as everyone involved consents, then it's fine, but if even one person does not consent then a wrong has been committed. In the case of public resource
The same slugs who want everyone to wear a bicycle helmet, not smoke within 25 feet of a doorway, sit through an 8 hr. class to be able to legally drive a boat, and ban Legos because they have small parts that kids might *choke* on.
I see this regularly when people complain about nanny states (complaints with which I greatly sympathize), but I never quite get why smoking is grouped in here. Everything else you mention are things which can hurt only yourself unless you are clearly reckless or malicious with what you are doing (driving your boat into someone else's, stuffing Legos down a kid's throat, etc). Thus trying to regulate them is nanny-like.
But smoking is an act which, in and of itself, is affecting other people. I don't think it's strongly regulated enough - I want it outright banned in public, or even in private around children (by virtue of them being stuck in a household). I'm not talking about drug regulation - I don't care what you put in your body - but the problem is the smoke. It's a form of pollution and needs to be regulated as such.
- Warning: Off-Topic Rant About Smoking "Rights" -
I liken smoking to urination - it's not extremely and immediately harmful like going around punching people, but it's harmful if you're exposed to it in excess, and it's offensive and disgusting to anyone who hasn't just been blinded by their culture into just accepting it (and there are cultures where people just piss in their own water sources, that doesn't make it any less unhealthy and gross). People shouldn't just wander around public spaces and do it everywhere; and while I don't care if you want to do it in your living room at home (I just won't visit you), if you've got kids who are stuck with you in that environment and you continue to make it unhealthy for them like that, then you should be held accountable for that.
Think about it. You wouldn't want people walking around pissing on the sidewalk or in restaurants or a public park. You would call people who piss in their own living room or even on their front porch gross pigs and probably wouldn't want to associate with them. If they had children living with them in that environment, you'd probably report them. So why is air pollution acceptable while this liquid pollution is not? Why should people be allowed to smoke around town, in the park, or in restaurants? Why should people be allowed to force their kids (who are captives of their families) to live in such a polluted environment?
You're probably a smoker and are just defending your "right" to smoke. Well I'm not willing to put up with your disgusting habit around me. It pisses me off to no end when I ask someone - even politely - to not smoke nearby and they get all uppity about their "right" to smoke there. Your right to smoke, like all other rights, ends when it infringes on the rights of others, in this case my right to an unpolluted environment. And that goes beyond just not smoking when asked, or only smoking when and where you think no one will be around. Smoke lingers longer than your burned-out nose can tell, I can smell it on you when you walk into the room, and you never know when someone else will come around anyway. If you went for a walk and found someone on an otherwise empty street taking a piss on the sidewalk, would you excuse that even if he was "polite" enough to stop pissing when you came by? Why not? Cause there's still piss all over the sidewalk, that's why! He shouldn't have been doing that in the first place.
- End Rant -
I don't care what you do with your own body. Go find all the heroine you want and shoot up until you die for all I care. Grow pot and make THC butter and eat all the special brownies you want. Go buy some chemicals and experiment and so long as you don't blow up anybody but yourself I've got no problem with it. Ride a bike without a helmet, it's only your own life at risk. But when your habits start taking a toll on the public space, then the rest of the public has a right to tell you to stop and hold you responsible. Go boating all you want, license or not, but if you run into the dock and break something you're in trouble. Take all the drugs you want, but don't dump your wastes into my air.
IMHO, logic is math, not philosophy. Arguing the nature of reality, mind and humanity is all good, but doesn't have a thing to do with CS
Logic is not math - math is a particular kind of logic, the other kind being verbal logic, which is all programming languages are. And logic, together with experience, is the basis of all philosophy. From logic and experience are formed epistemological methods like the scientific method (science used to be called "Natural Philosophy"). From epistemology come metaphysics and the hard sciences like physics. Chemistry reduces to physics, biology to chemistry, and psychology to biology.
Some metaethical naturalists (like me) hold that ethics reduces ultimately to psychology and really to biology - that ethical statements are simply statements about what is good for individuals and societies (the good of society being generally good for the individual so long as it's not explicitly bad for them), in the sense of what makes them happy or, more deeply, what contributes to their survival. (This is not to say that 'traditional morality' is good for survival - ethical statements can be false, too). And political science and economics are really just applied ethics.
Philosophy is nothing more than the reasoned investigation of things - all things. Every specific academic and political discipline ultimately has it's roots in philosophy. Religion too ties in here, in that philosophy and religion cover the same topics - the fundamental principles, ultimate consequences, and essential natures of both reality and morality. The difference being "religion" (in the sense of organized, traditional religions) usually offer answer to those sorts of questions and demand that people simply accept them (or ignore them in the case of less pushy religions), while philosophy is continually and explicitly open to questioning.
All that said, I think a lot of contemporary, "postmodern" philosophy is bullshit, along with the whole postmodern, anti-rationalist movement, and given the subject matter a lot of earlier philosophers have had a heavy religious bent too. (The latter group's problem being mostly that they fail to restrict their ontology to things accessible to experience, and wil try to explain the phenomenal universe in terms of things fundamentally beyond experience, or sometimes even contrary to it). So not all philosophical theories are well-grounded and scientific. But in philosophy if you *are* well-grounded and scientific you can usually refute them easily enough and do away with all the superstitious fluff that most people think of today when they think "philosophy".
...but democracy alone does not make a society good.
All societies, when it really comes down to it, are ruled by the tyranny of the majority, which is what unchecked democracy is. Even a dictator only rules because the people find that it would be in their best interest - at least, their best short-term interest - not to overthrow him, because he could hurt them or some such if they did otherwise. You only get the "illusion" of things being otherwise when a sufficiently powerful majority is enlightened enough to respect the rights of minority groups and individuals, and to keep minority groups and individuals who are NOT so respectful from running all over the rights of others. Only when enough people uphold their responsibilities to respect and defend each other do you get a truly ethical society.
So yes, democracy "works", in the sense that the people get whatever most of them want. The problem is, people don't always want what is best for them. Even looking only at individuals, it's easy to find cases all around where people make decisions aiming only at some perceived short-term good and wind up losing even bigger in the long run. Amplify this across a whole population and you get situations like we have now... vast numbers of people terrified of "terrorists" and unduly paranoid (of the wrong people). They then demand or at least allow that changes be made in law, certain people be granted certain powers and allowed to run roughshod over various and sundry other people so that "we" can all be "safe" and "free". All the while, this sets up the stage for the later erosion of our security and liberty, even for those members of the majority who supported such changes.
It's just another case of people being shortsighted.
So yeah, democracy works, inasmuch as "we the people" get what "we" want... whether we like it or not, "we" asked for it.
Actually, a "Democracy" means simply that the people have a say in who governs them. Nothing more, nothing less.
Democracy literally means popular rule, or rule by the people. So you're right in that, so long as the populace has a say in their government, a political system is to some extent democratic, or a kind of democracy. But the point I was making is that democracy as an isolated concept with nothing else to check it is simply popular rule, the "tyranny of the majority". Not all democratic systems are like that, but a "pure" democracy is (pure not being used as a superlative here; I think such a system is at best suboptimal).
Though my latter point did come down to the notion that, underneath all the formal political structure, any society is ultimately a pure democracy, inasmuch as the formal structure depends upon popular support for its continued existence. But the formal structure may say otherwise and yet still be democratic to some extent or another.
It's okay, you're probably a product of the Midwestern public school system - full of students who don't know how to study, taught by people that can't teach, and proudly lead by people who can't lead and have no reason to be proud.
This isn't even worth dignifying with a response, but what the hell. For what it's worth I'm from a medium-sized coastal city in California, I did alternately private schooling or independent study from 7th through 12th grades, and I disdain the way school is usually taught and am presently at university to become an elementary teacher myself (and hopefully do a better job than my predecessors). But you're right about bad leadership, whether you're talking about the school system or American politics.
Unfortunately, you have no clue about what a democracy is. Here's a hint: Democracy does not mean dictatorship of the majority
Actually, a straight-up pure democracy is just that.
That's why we live in a CONSTITUTIONAL democracy (or constitutional democratic republic if you want to get technical). The democratic part means "majority rule". The constitutional part means "minority rights". Without such constitutional protection, the minority's differences are suffered only at the pleasure of the majority.
Then again, since a constitution only has any real effect when it's supported and enforced by a majority of the populace (which also means keeping a few individuals in purportedly official positions from violating it), a constitution doesn't seem to be much more than a nice sentiment of how things ought to be.
Which seems to be the real source of all social and political failure: no matter what your ostensible form of government, things only work out well when a sufficient bulk of the populace are decent, respectful folk, AND have the balls to keep those who aren't so respectful from trampling all over everyone. Maybe certain documents are capable of inspiring people to be more respectful, either sentimentally or by convincing them that to do so is in their interest, but in the end it's really all a matter of public opinion. Even a utopian form of government, if nobody supports it, isn't going to make a lick of difference in the world.
Oh, if you want to fly you have to. But it's all voluntary, you don't have to fly. Oh, if you want a job at XXX, you have to. But it's all voluntary, you don't have to work at XXX. Oh, if you want to vote, you have to. But it's all voluntary, you don't have to vote. Oh, if you want to buy food, you have to. But it's all voluntary, you don't have to eat.
Nobody forces you, ok. All your choice.
There is no way to "force" another person to do anything, other than to physically move their bodies such that they do that thing, in which case that person didn't really do it, you did. Beyond that, any action a person performs is their choice.
That said, it is possible to alter a situation (or another person's perception of a situation) such that it is more in another person's interest to do one thing than another thing, by promising or threatening to do something or another if that person does one thing instead of the other. And of course, if you do this by threatening to do something unethical (e.g. threat of violence) if they make a choice you dislike, then that itself is unethical. That's what we call coercion, and it's a Bad Thing.
It is not unethical for a company or anyone else to require some voluntary action of you to get some voluntary action from them. Taken in isolation, none of the things you've listed above are in and of themselves unethical. If I run an airline, or a place of employment, or a grocery store, (voting is another thing entirely), I should have the right to demand anything I want from you in exchange for what you want from me.
Now, demanding something like a chip implant *should* be a very bad business decision on my part, because that's not something that people are really going to want to do. It's a very high price to pay, and so if people can at all avoid paying it, then they will. They problem is that they can't reasonable avoid paying it. The problem is not that individual establishments are making unreasonable demands like this. The problem is that this is happening in a social structure where there is a huge difference in power between the people making the unreasonable demands, and the people they are being demanded of. It's in effect the same reason that a monopoly or oligarchy can charge unreasonably high prices and people will pay them: power differential. The people and institutions making the demands don't need any individual nearly as much as those individuals need those making the demands. As a result, those in power can demand almost anything they want, and everyone will comply. In effect, they "have no choice" - all choices are unwanted, so people have to cut their losses and pick the lesser evil.
Some of this I would fault to problems in the capitalist-come-mercantilist economic system we've got, which does not provide adequate protection against the formation of market failures, i.e. monopolies, cartels, and oligopolies. But a lot of it I would fault to the one pervasive kind of monopoly that nobody really seems to question anymore: the monopoly on the "legitimate" use of force that we call government. I say that the use of force being legitimate or illegitimate has no bearing on position or title. When the use of force is legitimate in some situation, it's legitimate in the hands of anyone in that situation, and when it is generally illegitimate in any situation, it it illegitimate even for the so-called government to use in such situations. Ethics are ethics, and title or position have no effect on whether an action is ethical or not.
This post has gone far off from where I started and I'm not sure where I'm going with it anymore, so I think I'll stop now.
Slashdot Mirror
Question about Net Neutrality:
If net neutrality passes, what if I need a connection with QoS (quality of service) for two-way video or VOIP communication?
In order to implement QoS in a workable way, my packets need priority. But if my packets need priority, that's not "neutral". And it seems like network neutrality is designed to prevent me from buying any kind of QoS from network providers.
How is this a good thing?
Two things:
1) Net neutrality doesn't imply that no prioritization of packets is happening, only that no prioritization is done based on the origin of those packets. E.g. Verizon et al can prioritize voice or video streams coming across their network over web traffic, but it can't prioritize Google web packets over MSN web packets, or Skype voice packets over Vonage voice packets, etc. So you can still buy QoS for various services over your connection, but you can't pay more to prioritize your particular traffic over their network, as opposed to your competitors' traffic, except inasmuch as you're paying for a faster connection than your competitors are.
Which brings us to the second point...
2) If you need a guaranteed quality of service between two particular points, you'll need to buy high-end connections at both ends anyway, net neutrality or none. If you've got a high-bandwidth line with QoS for video traffic, and I've got my dinky home DSL connection with no such QoS (other than what my ISP might apply standard), I'm not going to get the full quality of your full-screen streaming video feed.
So you can still buy two high-speed uplinks to the network and even prioritize certain kinds of traffic over those connections to get a high-speed video conference going. And you can buy a faster connection on your end if you need to send out traffic faster. But you can't bribe the network to give your traffic higher priority than your competitors to me, the typical home user.
While I don't disagree much with your point, I would add that I, and many other people, expect certain things from the government beyond liberty and security. I expect that garbage be collected - I don't mind if it's subcontracted and if there's a fee (though I'd rather that was covered in income tax, as benefits the truely poor), but if there's no service, there will be serious public health issues.
That brings me on to something else I consider a requirement from the government. Healthcare. I don't believe that the poorest people in society should be unable to get medical care because they can't afford it. Finally, I'd passionately despise any government that withdrew manditory public education.
But, hey, as long as there aren't riots in the street, and you can carry guns and smoke pot, none of the rest really matters, does it?
I'd actually include a lot of that within the realm of freedom and safety; mostly under safety. Though I don't directly support government-run tax-paid services, I am in favor of some significant redistribution of wealth, and I have no problem with groups of people, though their governments, running various sorts of businesses like schools and hospitals and garbage disposal agencies, though those businesses would have to compete with other similar businesses. The redistribution of wealth would see to it that the poor can afford those businesses (or their competitors) about as well as the wealthy, or rather, that the difference between poor and wealthy isn't so much that businesses can price things with broad demand so exorbitantly.
If you're wondering how this falls under "safety", let me explain. I consider both interpersonal issues and economic/ecological issues (those dealing with resources) under both freedom and safety. Interpersonal freedom is your right to generally do what you want and disallow others from doing things unto you that you don't want; this is a right to liberty. Economic freedom is your right to possess things and disallow others from doing things to your possessions that you don't want; this is a right to property.
Those are both "negative rights". Safety invokes "positive" rights. Interpersonal safety, or the right to security, is your right to be rescued from a dangerous situation, which means both a casual duty for individual bystanders to do something to help those in danger and not to create a dangerous situation (firing guns at random in crowds, setting brush fires, etc); and a formal duty for governments to protect those in danger by providing emergency services - police, fire, etc. Economic safety, or the right to charity, is your right to be given to in times of need, which means both a casual duty for individuals to help those who need it and not to depreciate public resources (i.e. damaging the environment, etc), and a formal duty for governments to give to those in need by redistributing wealth. The point of the wealth redistribution is not some sort of communist flat equality though; it is to provide a stable market so that capitalism will function optimally, ensuring prices will be set fairly. It is for defense of the marketplace against market failure.
The specific method I envision for this is simple: take half of everybody's income, pool that, and redistribute it equally. The end effect of this is a progressive tax/welfare scale whereby those with exactly average incomes pay no taxes (unless gov't is operating at a loss) and get no welfare (unless gov't is operating at a profit), while those who make significantly more are taxed more, and those who make significantly less receive more welfare. If you have a healthy market with roughly equal players, almost no money will be redistributed. If you have massive market failure where some people are in disproportionately powerful bargaining positions, then you will have the wealthy being taxed massively and the poor being given a big hand up. But the system will never force complete equality, for the more equal people become the less center-ward pressure is applie
I think you missed the point I was making. I understand liberal democracy and agree with it. It is not the government's job to force some people's values on other people. It's the government's job to keep people from forcing their values on each other. It's the government's job to make sure people are safe and free. It does this by enforcing rights and responsibilities on people. But the reason why it enforces rights and responsibilities is because that *is* what's best for the country. You can't just will some good state of affairs into being; you have to attempt to achieve it through some action, and there's a probability of going awry with every action. The point of enforcing rights and responsibilities is to guarantee that overall, better things tend to come about than they otherwise would if you didn't hold people to their duty.
But what I was trying to get across in my original post was that morality _ISN'T_ just some set of common values. That's like saying that reality is just a set of common beliefs. In some lesser sense you could use the words to mean "common values" or "common beliefs", e.g. "the morality/reality of such-and-such culture is ________", in an anthropological, descriptive sense. But the same way that it doesn't make sense to say that what actually is real changes from culture to culture, or that the world may be round here in California but flat in some backwards luddite society in Nebraska, it makes no sense that what is actually moral changes from culture to culture either. What people believe and what people value changes, and those beliefs and values reflect what people THINK is real or moral, but they mustn't be mistaken for what is actually real or actually moral. That's why the most moral thing to do is to live according to your values and let others live according to theirs, and avoid stepping on each other's toes, so to speak. That way everybody gets what they value as best as possible.
Ethics is the study of what is right and what is wrong; the study of morality. Political science just is applied ethics. And actual government is, of course, applied political science. So morality is the goverment's job. But since morality is not just common values, forcing some particular set of common values on people is not the government's job. Back to the original topic: this anti-game legislation is not the government enforcing morality. It's the government enforcing value. It's not the government looking out for people's freedom and safety, protecting them from one another and allowing them to pursue what they value; it's the government helping one group against others, and telling them what they should value. That's not moral. That's not the government's job.
I'm a little confused about the moderation this post is getting. Thank you three for the Insightfuls, but why the Flamebait and Overrated? Someone obviously finds this offensive somehow... but I don't rightly see how. People just modding down because they disagree?
But you do have a point, except for the fact that morality (which is what this law entails) is NOT part of the government's job.
I must strongly disagree with your words here (and with the many others who espouse them), though I agree completely in spirit. Enforcing morality is the government's ONLY job. But morality is not synonymous with any particular group's common tastes or traditional values. Morality is about what is good for the everybody, and that is precisely what government's legitimate purpose is: to look out for the well-being of all of society.
But what is good for the everybody is a very small set of things: liberty and security. Any of the particulars (i.e. watching porn, eating red meat, having long hair, wearing shoes, whatever) may be good or bad for different people in different contexts, but freedom and safety are the two things that are always good for everyone. With those provided, people are free to acquire all the things that are good for them in particular and avoid those which are bad.
Which means that the government's job, as I think you were saying, is to mind it's own business, that business being making sure that other people are minding theirs. It is not the government's job to enforce the tastes or personal values of any people on any other people.
= The Universe IS God
Easy proof of this, with two simple premises:
Premise 1: The universe is "everything that exists", i.e. whatever it is that exists, summed up together, is the universe.
Premise 2: God is "the greatest thing that exists", i.e. God is not merely a part of some greater thing; nothing subsumes God.
Therefore God cannot coherently be something IN the universe, for to do so would contradict premise 2 (God being a part of something, while God is by definition not subsumed by anything).
But also, God cannot coherently be outside the universe, for that would contradict premise 1 (something existing outside the universe, while the universe by definition subsumes all that exists).
So any use of the term "God" to mean something other than just "the universe" is incoherent and such a "God" cannot therefore be real. So to coherently hold that such a greatest-of-all-beings "God" exists, one must equate such a God with the Universe. And back on topic, the investigation of the universe is just the investigation of God, as the old natural philosophers (aka scientists) said all along.
Of course, one could then question what kinds of things can be said to "exist" (e.g. are there "immaterial substances"?), but that's just what the scientific method addresses: the use of logic and experience to determine what does or even could exist.
And of course, if you want to mean something different by "the universe" (e.g. the "known universe" or the "local universe" or "this plane of reality" or whatever), or by "God" (e.g. some really powerful bearded guy flying around space shooting lightning bolts and such), then all this is null and void. But given the standard philosophical definitions of "the universe" and "God" used throughout western history, it seems pretty conclusive that the two must be one and the same.
We're the only species on this planet ever to develop art and science, the only species capable of understanding something about their existance and the nature of the universe, hell the only species to be able to look beyond day-to-day survival, and plan for something greater....and you think we "suck".
I said we've got our good points. Those are the good points. I think the reason I'm so down on mankind is because we *are* capable of all that and yet seem to underutilize it so much, because on top of all that genius we're so dysfunctional, which is a disgusting problem in itself and also holds back our full potential. That waste and dysfunction is what sickens me about mankind.
It's the same reason I'm down on myself so much. I've been told my entire life that I'm some sort of genius who can do anything he wants, with all this potential, and by some standards I'm actualizing it - I've got good friends, and a wonderful girl I've been with for almost three years who I hope to marry once I'm out of college, and it's looking like I'll be coming out of school with a Master's degree not only out of debt but maybe with a few grand in the bank to boot, having worked up to all of this after coming from a below-poverty-level family and being a friendless loser most of my childhood. It's taken a lot of work to get here, and a lot of inborn gifts and fortunate circumstances too. But I've also got serious mental problems that hurt myself and others, and I can't help but be down on myself for letting that kind of crap get in the way of the kind of success I could have, not only doing great things for myself but having a great impact on the world. I feel like I'm supposed to accomplish something spectacular, and that my dysfunctionality is spoiling that potential.
Likewise, mankind is capable of so much great art and science and we've done a lot with it considering where we came from, but seeing where we could go if we weren't so screwed up is maddening. I guess in some sense I'm so optimistic it turns to pessimism when those great expectations aren't met. Which is why I used to say to expect nothing, even while striving for the greatest heights... that way you'll always be pleasantly surprised at your successes and never disappointed by your failures, and always have as much of the former and as little of the latter as possible. That's what I used to say at least. If only I were capable of taking my own advice.
The problem is, what they're really saying is "humanity sucks, except for me".
Maybe a lot of people are, but not everyone.
I think most of humanity sucks. But I think I suck too. Doesn't mean I think either myself or humanity deserves to be destroyed just now. We've all got our good points along with our bad. The question is whether the good outweighs the bad, and that is a question left for history to decide.
If I'm really such a horrible person I'll wind up suffering the consequences of that sooner or later. If I'm bad enough I might end up dead because of it. I know at the least that I'm not perfect and will die eventually. But considering just within normal human limits, if there are no bad consequences of my behavior and everything turns out OK, then I'm either not as horrible as I thought I was, or I am but it's tolerable levels of badness, only possible by virtue of the good of others around me mitigating those consequences.
Same deal with humanity. If we blow ourselves up - either Earth, the galaxy, or whatever - well then in hindsight, we deserved it. Maybe not each of us as individuals, but as a society or species, yeah. Doesn't mean we *ought* to blow ourselves up now. We ought to try to be as good and successful a society/species as we possibly can in order to avoid such a fate. Maybe we'll fail to do so. Maybe we *would* fail to do so if not for some benevolent alien race out there who will save our asses from our own dysfunction. Who knows. History will tell. All we can do is try.
When I was younger I used to have a saying, one that I wish I could bring myself to apply in my life today:
"Plan for the worst. Strive for the best. Expect nothing."
.
Yes and no. Absolutism, as in an absolute truth, does exist. The problem arrises when you try to define one.
Absolutely. Er... no pun intended.
I agree completely that it's incoherent to hold any notion that equates to "there is no [objective] truth". But I wouldn't say that believing that there IS an objective truth is absolutism. I'd reserve that term for any position which claims itself to BE the ultimate truth, denying the subjectivity of the authors and supporters of such a position.
In short, absolutism is the denial of subjectivity, while relativism is the denial of objectivity. A rational, empirical, philosophic, scientific approach can't do either of these: it must acknowledge the fact that there is an objective measure of reality (and, back on subject, morality too), while also acknowledging the subjectivity of any individuals investigating and deliberating such things.
I couldn't quite follow what you were getting at about standards outside the context of discussion... but this notion of having to combine objectivity and subjectivity in order to avoid absolutism or relativism is closely related to why reason and philosophy and science all rely on a combination of logic and experience, and why that just is the universal standard.
Logic is all about objectivity, and the only facts which can be stated with absolute certainty are, as you say, simple logical truths: "not (P and not P)" is absolutely true always and everywhere because it can't conceivably be false. Conversely, experience is entirely subjective. I can't share my experience with you like I can share logical propositions with you. At best I can give a rough description, and you can try to reconstruct that experience in your mind and compare it to experiences of your own. So experience can only be agreed upon by consensus, and as such it's a very relative thing.
But if you combine these things, and try to construct some logical, mathematical formulae as though they were absolute truths, in such a way that they explain your experiences, but always keep open to the possibility of further experiences invalidating those old theories and requiring new ones, and never relying on anything which is in principle beyond experience, then you should continually get closer and closer to the complete "absolute truth" - though until you've experienced everything (which is certainly infeasible if not logically impossible), you'll never actually get there.
And that's all that the scientific method is: you observe something, explain it with a theory, follow that theory to it's logical conclusions, and then look to see if those conclusions actually match your experience. Lather, rinse, repeat. All this can be derived just from noting the faults of both absolutism and relativism, and it can be applied to pretty much everything. So long as you take a naturalist position on ethics, such that ethical and moral facts just consist of some sort of facts about people and the world (and aren't some kind of weird, inexperiencable and non-logically-derivable "facts"), then it applies just as much to ethics, and can be used to compare and contrast ethical systems between cultures without resorting to imperial absolutism or cultural relativism.
I'm marking the both of you as friends for the same reasons - I come here for good debate. For dialectic really, which both of you seem to appreciate.
(Wow, why does this remind me of that "I cast a friendship spell on both of you!" bit from the Dead Alewives D&D spoof?).
Anyway, I just wanted to chime in on one small part of your conversation:
I have always found the relative/absolute to be a circular argument, which is why it is so hard to discuss. In order for us to do it any justice, and not go around in circles, we would first have to establish a scale to discuss the topic on. Your statements about relative absolutism couldn't be more true. Absolute is relative to something.
This is something I've been thinking a lot about lately, regarding "postmodernism" and it's "anti-Enlightenment" stance against science and rationality as universals. A recent discussion about the "post-modern period" versus the "modern period" made me realize that society doesn't swing back and forth between absolutist and relativist periods, like you might expect; one coming as the backlash to the other and then later vice-versa. It seems to me that it swings back and forth between periods of BOTH absolutism and relativism simultaneously, and periods of moderation.
In ancient times you had the religious state telling people what was real or moral in absolutes, but at the same time you had people like the Sophists who use "reason" (rhetoric) to convince people that they were right, while telling themselves that there really is no right or wrong besides what you can convince people is right or wrong. Then came Socrates and the whole philosophical movement and people started using reason and observation to question everything and see which ideas held up and what other ideas must follow from those ones; regardless of whether that conforms with what anybody previously believes. Then Rome fell and the Dark Ages came and people turned more to dogmatic religious absolutism. (I'm not really aware of any major relativist groups in Western civilization during the Dark Ages but it wouldn't surprise me to find them). And then came the Enlightenment and the renewal of using reason and observation - the scientific method - and the investigation of secular theories of ethics, deontological and utilitarian theories, things which started with questions like "what does it mean for something to be good? by what standard can we tell if something is good or not?", rather than a list of what things are good or bad in particular. And now we seem to be entering another period of religious absolutism and postmodern relativism again... sigh.
Introspecting on this, it dawned on me that relativism and absolutism come together because both arise from a lack epistemological and meta-ethical standards for investigating what particular ideas are real or unreal, and what particular deeds are moral or immoral. Instead they both rely on something being right (in either the sense of "true" or "good") simply because someone believes it; and the only difference between them is whose beliefs matter to them. To the absolutist, what I believe is right, and it must be, because I believe it. To the relativist, nothing is right, or, well, everything is right, because just look around and you'll see that people believe all these different things. Neither position allows for the comparison and critique of one set of ideas against another.
The analogy which occurred to me is that of measuring weights. In this analogy, ideas, theories, worldviews, explanations, religions, what have you... are all visualized as various physical objects or bundles of objects. The absolutist has his thing or his bundle of things and declares that it is the heaviest thing around, and nothing could possibly weigh more than this; and any claims to the contrary are summarily ignored. The relativist says, "well, everything weighs something, I mean look at all these different things, they're all kinda heavy, they don't just float around by themselves, people
The stock market mas made public corporations more short-term than most humans - managers' pay and evaluation are linked to very short term fluctuations in stock price.
Right, that's what I meant. The owners of the company (the stockholders) don't mind demanding things that kill the corporation off eventually (for varying values of "eventually") so long as it makes them rich right now. They can go invest in and kill off another corp later. They're nothing but parasites, and if it weren't for the hard work of other people they'd drag the whole world down with them. Who knows, maybe they will anyway...
I think there are several reasons that people (and the people that run companies) do the wrong thing.
They don't see the long-term benefits of doing the right thing.
They mistakenly value short-term over long-term. (There's scientific data that shows that this is the case in general, even when it's clearly irrational.)
They're lazy.
All of these really come down to being short-sighted, or at least, to acting short-sightedly (i.e. one may realize that something will be of long-term detriment but the short-term benefits are overwhelmingly compelling). Either a lack of consciousness of a lack of willpower can bring this about. I know for me it's certainly the willpower problem most of the time... I'm acutely conscious that many things I do are shortsighted and wrong, but can't seem to make myself do otherwise.
They don't think they'll get caught.
This one I don't think fits in though. Bad acts aren't just bad because of the consequences that arise from other people not liking them. They're bad because they have consequences in an of themselves which, were it not for the good deeds of others counteracting them, would be bad for the actor. Polluting the environment is bad because you need the environment to be clean in order to survive; in small portions the effects may not be noticeable but nevertheless, if you did that a lot, or if a lot of people did that, there would be negative effects, regardless of whether anybody thought the act itself was wrong.
Sloth (as in excessive laziness, being an unproductive leech; not the good kind of efficiency-maximizing laziness) is bad because it depletes the resources you need to survive without producing any more. If everybody in the world were suddenly to stop working and rest on their asses and live off of what's already been produced - even if nobody thought that was wrong, if nobody thought stealing was wrong and people could just take whatever resources were out there - then we would still eventually starve to death, whether or not anyone thought the sloth leading to that situation was wrong.
Likewise, harming other people or society is wrong because you have a better chance of surviving in civilization (provided that civilization is not overtly hostile or dangerous to you in some way) than all alone out in the woods. Even neglecting the direct risk of assault that would arise if everyone were to disregard each other's well-being, even if it was only YOU harming other people, if you did it enough you would wind up destroying civilization, putting you all alone in the world; and while you may enjoy being away from other people (I know I certainly do), it's still better for you, in terms of your chances of survival, to have the safety net of society there, so long as society isn't perverted such that it's causing more harm to it's members than good.
Which segues nicely into the notion that the social harm and benefit thing goes even further than immediate benefits to you during your life. If you look at the trend of all of this, good behaviors are those which tend to perpetuate systems that behave in those ways, and bad behaviors are those which tend to terminate the systems that behave in those ways. It's really quite evolutionary: those patterns which reproduce, propagate, or otherwise perpetuate themselves will keep on going, and those that don't will fail. With simple biology the patterns are those which are dictated by DNA, and the systems which manifest those patterns in action are biological organisms. With sociology the patterns are the customs, traditions, laws, moral and ethical beliefs, and other sorts of behavior-guiding concepts of the people of a society, and the systems are the social organizations themselves.
So if you consider that all people must eventually die, it seems that if survival is the ultimate point of morality then there is no point, because you are going to die eventually no matter what. But if you look beyond your own personal survival, you can see that the patterns which const
I'm a little tired of this constant false distinction between what's good for business and what's moral or ethical. The way I see it, what's moral or ethical is just so *because* it is good for your survival in the longest, broadest consideration of things.
I like to use a swimming analogy. We're all in an infinite sea, with no shores and no bottom. To stay afloat (alive), you've got to do something that keeps you from sinking. The obvious answer here is "swim!", but consider that you could also hang off of a couple other people, or if you've got dense enough masses of people around, climb on top of them and get yourself clear out of the water. In this analogy, swimming is doing anything good and productive that keeps you afloat. A lone swimmer not near anyone else would be like a subsistence farmer. Helping those who can't swim, holding them up (so long as you're not drowning yourself), is doing a supererogatory deed, going beyond the call of duty to do good. Hanging off of other people is bad (though their helping to keep you up is good), and walking all over them is clearly bad.
But why are those things good or bad? Simple: if everyone were to hang off of everyone else, and nobody was swimming, we'd all drown. Morals are by definition meant to be universal codes of behavior, so something is immoral if and only if, if everyone were to do that, the results would be bad. It follows from this that the only reason anyone ever does anything immoral is because they're being short-sighted: walking all over people seems good for you in the short term, but in the big picture you're giving yourself a small gain at the expense of an overall greater loss across the whole mass of people, including yourself. If everyone were to do that you'd be screwed; the only reason it seems good at all in the short term is by virtue of all those hard-working swimmers you're walking over.
The thing I don't quite get is that, while humans have an excuse to be short-sighted since the shit quite often won't hit the fan within their lifetime, corporations are potentially immortal and so I'd think that they would be the longest-planning, most moral entities around, looking out for the economic well-being of the world. In some sense they are, with the pervasive pressure from above for the working class to work harder, but the strongest leadership is by example, and the more people and corporations we have making it rich by riding over others, the more the next generation is going to avoid working if at all possible to try and be a rich corporate executive and/or shareholder instead... and then, once enough people are resting comfortably on the shoulders of a few exhausted swimmers, they'll all drown; or at least, once those swimmers drown, or throw the fatasss freeriders off, they'll all have to start swimming again.
I guess the answer is that corporations are still being run by humans, which are usually short-sighted creatures, and who don't care if their corporations die eventually so long as it makes them rich in the short term. But maybe, to bring it back on topic, some people aren't so short-sighted and want to do something that will last beyond their own lives. I know I certainly do; to establish an enduring legacy, make some long-lasting positive impact on the world, is the closest thing to immortality anyone can achieve. Maybe the folks in charge of Google want that too. And they've actually got an opportunity here to do so. So don't discount all claims of morality out-of-hand by saying that they're only driven by profit. It can be both, and must be both if you're looking at the longest long run, which all of these immortal corporations ought to be doing.
So, out of curiosity, you'd be morally ok with a diner owned and operated by a smoker and his smoker wife, with no other employees, where patron smoking is allowed. (As long as there's a sign on the door: "WARNING: SMOKING ALLOWED. Enter at your own risk. No children under 18.)
I'm not so sure about that, because a restaurant is still the public space of a private business, like a storefront is, and I would generally ban smoking in public on the basis (as I said before) that while in hindsight if nobody minded the act it was fine, in foresight we have to act on principles that will generally tend to avoid wrongdoing. If someone acts against those principles and nobody minds, then nobody's going to complain and so the law won't be enforced, which allows for such consensual exceptions, but encourages general compliance with the law to avoid possibly running afoul of it.
My main concern is that, due to public sentiments about smoking, this will lead to most or many restaurants allowing smoking. Some part of me wants to say "just let the market sort it out; if enough people hate smoking those businesses will fail", but that seems like it allows majority (smoker) sentiment to override minority (non-smoker) rights. It reminds me of racial discrimination: it's fine for you to keep people from entering your private home on the basis on their race or anything you want, but you can't have a Whites Only restaurant because you're violating people's rights. In the same way, you can keep your house as disgusting as you like (so long as there's not kids being endangered by it), but you can't maintain a polluted public space of a business for the same reasons you can't pollute the truly public spaces outside.
So yeah, I'm not 100% sure about this case, but in general I'd want to say that public spaces of businesses are subject to the same rules as truly public places are. A private club, which discriminates on who it allows inside and such, is basically the same case as a private residence and they can allow smoking all they want. But anywhere that is ostensibly open to the public at large, like storefronts and restaurants, should be treated as a public spaces.
First of all, thank you for not taking offense at my last post. This is a very touchy subject for me and I kind of tend to fly off the handle a bit. Because of a lot of hostile reactions from smokers to polite requests in the past - and growing up having such a person for a father - I now generally assume anyone defensive of "smoker's rights" is an ass. I guess being strung out on nicotine is to blame for that. But you don't seem to be an ass, and that's a nice change of pace.
I'm not defending the right to smoke indoors unless it's a private home, though I personally think that, unless it's a place where you *have* to go like a courthouse or the DMV, it should really be up to the employees and owners.
Right, and like I said, I don't think there should be laws against smoking in your own home, or allowing others to smoke there, with the exception of the impact it has on children who don't really have the option of just not visiting those places if it bothers them.
Outdoors is a different story - smoke dissipates pretty quickly. (Whereas urine doesn't, and tends to make the shoes of whomever steps in it smell pissy.) I'm sorry, but walking through an occasional smoky area isn't going to kill you nor shorten your lifespan materially.
Walking down almost any street in a decently populated area, I regularly run into many clouds of cigarette smoke coming from other people on the street. I disagree that urine is any worse - I think people are just desensitized to smoke in our culture. I can smell it on people who walk into a room, or even smell it on my own clothes if I've been in a smoky area (even outdoors), as much as I could smell urine on someone.
And the issue isn't whether a little of it will shorten my life span or any such significant effects. The issue is that there's a reason why our senses are naturally averse to the smell or urine or smoke - because excessive expose to them can be harmful. Walking around and poking people with your fingers isn't going to significantly harm them but it can still get you arrested for assault, because you're doing something to someone that causes them discomfort against their will.
No pollution, on an individual level, is really all that bad. But it needs to be condemned in every individual case because all together, if everybody did it, things would get pretty bad. Walking down a street full of smokers is no less gross to me than walking down a street covered in urine, and I walk around barefoot a lot so that's saying something.
If you're so concerned about second-hand smoke, I guess you support banning all public fireworks, outlawing barbecues and fireplaces down the shore, banning deep-fried foods (after all, some smoke might escape through the kitchen vent fan), and stopping all diesel trains. All of those things make smoke that's just as bad for you as cigg. smoke. Remember, though, it's the dose that makes the poison. If you don't sit in smokefilled rooms regularly or smoke a lot, it's unlikely to give you cancer.
Like you say, it's the dose that makes the poison, and I'm willing to grant some leeway to the same extent that I am other pollutants. I don't care if someone way out in the middle of nowhere pees behind a bush, or if someone who hiked to the top of some mountain a hundred miles from anywhere enjoys a victory cigarette. If someone's really sure that no one is going to be impacted by what they do, then that's OK in retrospect. I don't care if someone takes a leak in their own back yard, so long as it doesn't run under the fence into mine; likewise I don't care if someone smokes in their back yard either, so long as it doesn't blow over the fence into mine. Same thing with barbecues, fireworks, deep friers and diesel trucks - so long as it's not blowing in anybody's face, no harm done.
My standard for this, like all things, is that so long as everyone involved consents, then it's fine, but if even one person does not consent then a wrong has been committed. In the case of public resource
The same slugs who want everyone to wear a bicycle helmet, not smoke within 25 feet of a doorway, sit through an 8 hr. class to be able to legally drive a boat, and ban Legos because they have small parts that kids might *choke* on.
I see this regularly when people complain about nanny states (complaints with which I greatly sympathize), but I never quite get why smoking is grouped in here. Everything else you mention are things which can hurt only yourself unless you are clearly reckless or malicious with what you are doing (driving your boat into someone else's, stuffing Legos down a kid's throat, etc). Thus trying to regulate them is nanny-like.
But smoking is an act which, in and of itself, is affecting other people. I don't think it's strongly regulated enough - I want it outright banned in public, or even in private around children (by virtue of them being stuck in a household). I'm not talking about drug regulation - I don't care what you put in your body - but the problem is the smoke. It's a form of pollution and needs to be regulated as such.
- Warning: Off-Topic Rant About Smoking "Rights" -
I liken smoking to urination - it's not extremely and immediately harmful like going around punching people, but it's harmful if you're exposed to it in excess, and it's offensive and disgusting to anyone who hasn't just been blinded by their culture into just accepting it (and there are cultures where people just piss in their own water sources, that doesn't make it any less unhealthy and gross). People shouldn't just wander around public spaces and do it everywhere; and while I don't care if you want to do it in your living room at home (I just won't visit you), if you've got kids who are stuck with you in that environment and you continue to make it unhealthy for them like that, then you should be held accountable for that.
Think about it. You wouldn't want people walking around pissing on the sidewalk or in restaurants or a public park. You would call people who piss in their own living room or even on their front porch gross pigs and probably wouldn't want to associate with them. If they had children living with them in that environment, you'd probably report them. So why is air pollution acceptable while this liquid pollution is not? Why should people be allowed to smoke around town, in the park, or in restaurants? Why should people be allowed to force their kids (who are captives of their families) to live in such a polluted environment?
You're probably a smoker and are just defending your "right" to smoke. Well I'm not willing to put up with your disgusting habit around me. It pisses me off to no end when I ask someone - even politely - to not smoke nearby and they get all uppity about their "right" to smoke there. Your right to smoke, like all other rights, ends when it infringes on the rights of others, in this case my right to an unpolluted environment. And that goes beyond just not smoking when asked, or only smoking when and where you think no one will be around. Smoke lingers longer than your burned-out nose can tell, I can smell it on you when you walk into the room, and you never know when someone else will come around anyway. If you went for a walk and found someone on an otherwise empty street taking a piss on the sidewalk, would you excuse that even if he was "polite" enough to stop pissing when you came by? Why not? Cause there's still piss all over the sidewalk, that's why! He shouldn't have been doing that in the first place.
- End Rant -
I don't care what you do with your own body. Go find all the heroine you want and shoot up until you die for all I care. Grow pot and make THC butter and eat all the special brownies you want. Go buy some chemicals and experiment and so long as you don't blow up anybody but yourself I've got no problem with it. Ride a bike without a helmet, it's only your own life at risk. But when your habits start taking a toll on the public space, then the rest of the public has a right to tell you to stop and hold you responsible. Go boating all you want, license or not, but if you run into the dock and break something you're in trouble. Take all the drugs you want, but don't dump your wastes into my air.
IMHO, logic is math, not philosophy. Arguing the nature of reality, mind and humanity is all good, but doesn't have a thing to do with CS
Logic is not math - math is a particular kind of logic, the other kind being verbal logic, which is all programming languages are. And logic, together with experience, is the basis of all philosophy. From logic and experience are formed epistemological methods like the scientific method (science used to be called "Natural Philosophy"). From epistemology come metaphysics and the hard sciences like physics. Chemistry reduces to physics, biology to chemistry, and psychology to biology.
Some metaethical naturalists (like me) hold that ethics reduces ultimately to psychology and really to biology - that ethical statements are simply statements about what is good for individuals and societies (the good of society being generally good for the individual so long as it's not explicitly bad for them), in the sense of what makes them happy or, more deeply, what contributes to their survival. (This is not to say that 'traditional morality' is good for survival - ethical statements can be false, too). And political science and economics are really just applied ethics.
Philosophy is nothing more than the reasoned investigation of things - all things. Every specific academic and political discipline ultimately has it's roots in philosophy. Religion too ties in here, in that philosophy and religion cover the same topics - the fundamental principles, ultimate consequences, and essential natures of both reality and morality. The difference being "religion" (in the sense of organized, traditional religions) usually offer answer to those sorts of questions and demand that people simply accept them (or ignore them in the case of less pushy religions), while philosophy is continually and explicitly open to questioning.
All that said, I think a lot of contemporary, "postmodern" philosophy is bullshit, along with the whole postmodern, anti-rationalist movement, and given the subject matter a lot of earlier philosophers have had a heavy religious bent too. (The latter group's problem being mostly that they fail to restrict their ontology to things accessible to experience, and wil try to explain the phenomenal universe in terms of things fundamentally beyond experience, or sometimes even contrary to it). So not all philosophical theories are well-grounded and scientific. But in philosophy if you *are* well-grounded and scientific you can usually refute them easily enough and do away with all the superstitious fluff that most people think of today when they think "philosophy".
If you spun the bucket and the rest of the universe around the false bottom instead, would you get the same results? ;-)
Dude, everyone can tell you're faking. The conditioning not only hides the, but also the space that is left behind when you can't see them.
Hides the what?
...but democracy alone does not make a society good.
All societies, when it really comes down to it, are ruled by the tyranny of the majority, which is what unchecked democracy is. Even a dictator only rules because the people find that it would be in their best interest - at least, their best short-term interest - not to overthrow him, because he could hurt them or some such if they did otherwise. You only get the "illusion" of things being otherwise when a sufficiently powerful majority is enlightened enough to respect the rights of minority groups and individuals, and to keep minority groups and individuals who are NOT so respectful from running all over the rights of others. Only when enough people uphold their responsibilities to respect and defend each other do you get a truly ethical society.
So yes, democracy "works", in the sense that the people get whatever most of them want. The problem is, people don't always want what is best for them. Even looking only at individuals, it's easy to find cases all around where people make decisions aiming only at some perceived short-term good and wind up losing even bigger in the long run. Amplify this across a whole population and you get situations like we have now... vast numbers of people terrified of "terrorists" and unduly paranoid (of the wrong people). They then demand or at least allow that changes be made in law, certain people be granted certain powers and allowed to run roughshod over various and sundry other people so that "we" can all be "safe" and "free". All the while, this sets up the stage for the later erosion of our security and liberty, even for those members of the majority who supported such changes.
It's just another case of people being shortsighted.
So yeah, democracy works, inasmuch as "we the people" get what "we" want... whether we like it or not, "we" asked for it.
Yeah, you got to be careful with analogies.
When it comes to security, imagine aliens trying to take over your ship...
This has got to be the best juxtaposition of two sentences ever found on Slashdot.
It's one thing for a warrant to grant police the right to { monitor your communications | search your home } in search of incriminating evidence.
It's another thing entirely to require that { phone systems | houses } be built in such a way that it's particularly convenient for them to do so.
Actually, a "Democracy" means simply that the people have a say in who governs them. Nothing more, nothing less.
Democracy literally means popular rule, or rule by the people. So you're right in that, so long as the populace has a say in their government, a political system is to some extent democratic, or a kind of democracy. But the point I was making is that democracy as an isolated concept with nothing else to check it is simply popular rule, the "tyranny of the majority". Not all democratic systems are like that, but a "pure" democracy is (pure not being used as a superlative here; I think such a system is at best suboptimal).
Though my latter point did come down to the notion that, underneath all the formal political structure, any society is ultimately a pure democracy, inasmuch as the formal structure depends upon popular support for its continued existence. But the formal structure may say otherwise and yet still be democratic to some extent or another.
It's okay, you're probably a product of the Midwestern public school system - full of students who don't know how to study, taught by people that can't teach, and proudly lead by people who can't lead and have no reason to be proud.
This isn't even worth dignifying with a response, but what the hell. For what it's worth I'm from a medium-sized coastal city in California, I did alternately private schooling or independent study from 7th through 12th grades, and I disdain the way school is usually taught and am presently at university to become an elementary teacher myself (and hopefully do a better job than my predecessors). But you're right about bad leadership, whether you're talking about the school system or American politics.
Unfortunately, you have no clue about what a democracy is. Here's a hint: Democracy does not mean dictatorship of the majority
Actually, a straight-up pure democracy is just that.
That's why we live in a CONSTITUTIONAL democracy (or constitutional democratic republic if you want to get technical). The democratic part means "majority rule". The constitutional part means "minority rights". Without such constitutional protection, the minority's differences are suffered only at the pleasure of the majority.
Then again, since a constitution only has any real effect when it's supported and enforced by a majority of the populace (which also means keeping a few individuals in purportedly official positions from violating it), a constitution doesn't seem to be much more than a nice sentiment of how things ought to be.
Which seems to be the real source of all social and political failure: no matter what your ostensible form of government, things only work out well when a sufficient bulk of the populace are decent, respectful folk, AND have the balls to keep those who aren't so respectful from trampling all over everyone. Maybe certain documents are capable of inspiring people to be more respectful, either sentimentally or by convincing them that to do so is in their interest, but in the end it's really all a matter of public opinion. Even a utopian form of government, if nobody supports it, isn't going to make a lick of difference in the world.
Fast forward to future...
Oh, if you want to fly you have to. But it's all voluntary, you don't have to fly.
Oh, if you want a job at XXX, you have to. But it's all voluntary, you don't have to work at XXX.
Oh, if you want to vote, you have to. But it's all voluntary, you don't have to vote.
Oh, if you want to buy food, you have to. But it's all voluntary, you don't have to eat.
Nobody forces you, ok. All your choice.
There is no way to "force" another person to do anything, other than to physically move their bodies such that they do that thing, in which case that person didn't really do it, you did. Beyond that, any action a person performs is their choice.
That said, it is possible to alter a situation (or another person's perception of a situation) such that it is more in another person's interest to do one thing than another thing, by promising or threatening to do something or another if that person does one thing instead of the other. And of course, if you do this by threatening to do something unethical (e.g. threat of violence) if they make a choice you dislike, then that itself is unethical. That's what we call coercion, and it's a Bad Thing.
It is not unethical for a company or anyone else to require some voluntary action of you to get some voluntary action from them. Taken in isolation, none of the things you've listed above are in and of themselves unethical. If I run an airline, or a place of employment, or a grocery store, (voting is another thing entirely), I should have the right to demand anything I want from you in exchange for what you want from me.
Now, demanding something like a chip implant *should* be a very bad business decision on my part, because that's not something that people are really going to want to do. It's a very high price to pay, and so if people can at all avoid paying it, then they will. They problem is that they can't reasonable avoid paying it. The problem is not that individual establishments are making unreasonable demands like this. The problem is that this is happening in a social structure where there is a huge difference in power between the people making the unreasonable demands, and the people they are being demanded of. It's in effect the same reason that a monopoly or oligarchy can charge unreasonably high prices and people will pay them: power differential. The people and institutions making the demands don't need any individual nearly as much as those individuals need those making the demands. As a result, those in power can demand almost anything they want, and everyone will comply. In effect, they "have no choice" - all choices are unwanted, so people have to cut their losses and pick the lesser evil.
Some of this I would fault to problems in the capitalist-come-mercantilist economic system we've got, which does not provide adequate protection against the formation of market failures, i.e. monopolies, cartels, and oligopolies. But a lot of it I would fault to the one pervasive kind of monopoly that nobody really seems to question anymore: the monopoly on the "legitimate" use of force that we call government. I say that the use of force being legitimate or illegitimate has no bearing on position or title. When the use of force is legitimate in some situation, it's legitimate in the hands of anyone in that situation, and when it is generally illegitimate in any situation, it it illegitimate even for the so-called government to use in such situations. Ethics are ethics, and title or position have no effect on whether an action is ethical or not.
This post has gone far off from where I started and I'm not sure where I'm going with it anymore, so I think I'll stop now.