Well, maybe we're not the egoistic asses we show ourselves to be most of the time. No idea. Maybe they just don't like killing people?
I can understand the stance of, "I'm not going to do bad stuff, because it makes me feel icky, and I don't like feeling icky."
But the thing I'm especially interested in, for this thread, is what motivates the various actors in the medical ethics arena:
The ethics "researchers". Why do they do what they do? And what's the plenary basis for any of their ethical reasoning? And what exactly is the ends they seek with their work?
The people who are potentially bound by the ethics in question. Why do they care what the ethics researchers say? And why aren't their own consciences sufficient to guide them?
No, it's about minimizing the average amount of harm on everyone, including yourself.
So you think it's entirely explained by enlightened self interest?
If so, I have trouble believing that. It doesn't seem to account for physicians how try to follow ethical standards that are decoupled from their own best interests. For example, a doctor who's unwilling to perform lethal injections for the state.
Good, if you disqualify my because of an opinion I have is different to yours I didn't want to work for you anyways! Really, who wants to work for close minded yes men?
Just about any unemployed parent, husband with a sick wife, or kid just out of college who can't break into the field and needs anything relevant to add to his resume.
Googling someone to see if they're a Nazi child molester on the no-fly list is perfectly legal, and as a hiring manager, you can bet I'm going to keep doing it.
That's your Google search for prospective employees??? Geez, what line of business is your company in???
For years in the astronomical community there's been a debate about whether or not the G-Ring exists in planets.
I think it's pretty obvious that all of our long, hard rockets should thrust towards the solar system's known G-Rings whenever possible. Anything less would be, well, selfish.
How did the Seinfeld finale fail? The characters were thrown in jail for doing what they'd always done: nothing. There was really no other way it could have ended satisfactorily. Typical sitcom endings where all of the stories are wrapped up (Jerry and Elaine getting back together, or Kramer finding his long lost father, for instance) would have been completely out of style for the series.
Did you expect something else?
I say it failed because, from what I saw anyway, a significant majority of the fans said the ending sucked.
You're probably right for shows like 24, but I don't think you're right for most sitcoms.
The TV show Seinfeld had a pretty definitive ending (despite the spinoffs that followed). It sucked.
Contrast that to South Park and Family Guy, where although there's a tiny bit of ploy carry-over from one episode to the next, each individual episode tends to have an ending that completely wraps up that episode's story arc.
So the thing common to Seinfeld, South Park, and Family Guy, is that they do have good endings: at the end of each episode. And when a series final ending was attempted (Seinfeld), it failed.
Wow that's a loaded question. Assuming you are not a troller I will try to answer as best I can. Some schools of ethics rely on the presence of a higher power, while IMHO the more stable and logical schools follow the 'least amount of harm' philosophy. The question needs to be asked, will more harm come to society if we use embryonic stem cells or if we avoid them. In this case it seems to me that the answer is using them causes no harm, which is why the Canadian government cannot find a reason to ban the use of embryonic material
I didn't meant my question as a troll. Actually, I don't even understand why you're saying it's loaded. I guess I have a lot more reading to do.
But anyway, even with the "least amount of harm" idea, what's the plenary motivation for pursuing it? Is it basically that a person tries to work out and/or apply (in this case, medical) ethics with a goal of maximizing a feeling of moral goodness and/or minimizing feelings of guilt?
as my wife (who does research and writes articles in neuroscience) says: 90% of the research is to find something enough interesting to get more money for your researches. It's not bad, it simply is how it works in science research. When you write an article, you always have to project your discovery into the future and tell how it will (not would) affect and save the life of many sick people, even if you know it will happen in 100 years at last.
Is ethics the business of identifying rules regarding what we'd feel bad for having done, so that we can avoid guilty feelings?
I can kind of understand theists' reasons for striving to act in a moral/ethical way, but I've never gotten a clear explanation of why non-theists would put energy into ethics (medical ethics, in this case).
If one gathers data from many sources, in order to justify to the US FDA some claim about a drug: how can one certify that those data are accurate?
I was under the impression that despite its horrific flaws, the current regime requires the drug researchers to seriously vouch for the (subset of) the data they present to the FDA.
I too would want a PS3, but I won't buy one and wouldn't be able to afford the games so I would need to have it cracked. (Which is probably one huge reason they sell less.)
Actually, I bought one about a year ago so I could try out some programming on the Cell processor. But since it can dual-boot, I also bought a few games.
What I realized is that for most game genres, I just prefer a PC:
For martial arts / sword fighting games, the PS/3's controller beat a standard PC, hands down. On the other hand, the two games in this categories that I tried for the PS/3 (Virtua Fighter (5?) and Heavenly Sword) reminded me of the worst part of these games: needing to waste too much of my short life memorizing countless, intricate sequences of controller commands in order go employ certain moves.
For FPS's, I found I hate not having a mouse, and the PS/3 games seem to just not support mice.
I couldn't find anything like my PC favorites on the PS/3: Civilization, Starcraft, etc.
I was surprised by the poor design in some of the games I did buy for the PS/3: Armored Core (4?), and Virtua Fighter (5?). The menu systems (especially VF5's) were nothing less than Sadistic. I realize you can get bad games on any system, but these made up 50% of the games I'd played on the PS/3. Disliking half of the games is the worst ratio I've encountered for any system I've owned, and this probably speaks to Sony's inability to get many good game makers to target the PS/3.
If a school district adopts Linux and open source then who is going to be the admin in charge of updates, patches, server, network, and desktop maintenance, etc?
who does it now? That is your answer. If they cant, then tell them, learn or we need to replace you. Magically they learn.
Or, magically things start going wrong with all of the Linux-related hardware.
People, especially in hard-to-fire governmental positions, can sometimes be stunningly vile.
Remember: a healthy industry has two major competitors slugging each other out at about 40% marketshare each, a third competitor between 15 and 20% marketshare, largely ignored by the first two, and then a myriad of minor competitors making up the rest of the market, filling niche needs in that market. A dominated, but not monopolistic, industry has its number one company at about 60% marketshare, a number two at 30-40%, a number three company trying to get double digit percentages, and possibly a few others eeking out their living in niche markets. The desktop operating system market is not anywhere near these. Microsoft is sitting over 80%, Mac is somewhere around 5-10%, and others are filling niche roles.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, maybe we're not the egoistic asses we show ourselves to be most of the time. No idea. Maybe they just don't like killing people?
I can understand the stance of, "I'm not going to do bad stuff, because it makes me feel icky, and I don't like feeling icky."
But the thing I'm especially interested in, for this thread, is what motivates the various actors in the medical ethics arena:
No, it's about minimizing the average amount of harm on everyone, including yourself.
So you think it's entirely explained by enlightened self interest?
If so, I have trouble believing that. It doesn't seem to account for physicians how try to follow ethical standards that are decoupled from their own best interests. For example, a doctor who's unwilling to perform lethal injections for the state.
Good, if you disqualify my because of an opinion I have is different to yours I didn't want to work for you anyways! Really, who wants to work for close minded yes men?
Just about any unemployed parent, husband with a sick wife, or kid just out of college who can't break into the field and needs anything relevant to add to his resume.
Googling someone to see if they're a Nazi child molester on the no-fly list is perfectly legal, and as a hiring manager, you can bet I'm going to keep doing it.
That's your Google search for prospective employees??? Geez, what line of business is your company in???
I'm impressed that I got modded "Redundant" when I had the very first post in the thread.
For years in the astronomical community there's been a debate about whether or not the G-Ring exists in planets.
I think it's pretty obvious that all of our long, hard rockets should thrust towards the solar system's known G-Rings whenever possible. Anything less would be, well, selfish.
How did the Seinfeld finale fail? The characters were thrown in jail for doing what they'd always done: nothing. There was really no other way it could have ended satisfactorily. Typical sitcom endings where all of the stories are wrapped up (Jerry and Elaine getting back together, or Kramer finding his long lost father, for instance) would have been completely out of style for the series.
Did you expect something else?
I say it failed because, from what I saw anyway, a significant majority of the fans said the ending sucked.
You're probably right for shows like 24, but I don't think you're right for most sitcoms.
The TV show Seinfeld had a pretty definitive ending (despite the spinoffs that followed). It sucked.
Contrast that to South Park and Family Guy, where although there's a tiny bit of ploy carry-over from one episode to the next, each individual episode tends to have an ending that completely wraps up that episode's story arc.
So the thing common to Seinfeld, South Park, and Family Guy, is that they do have good endings: at the end of each episode. And when a series final ending was attempted (Seinfeld), it failed.
Wow that's a loaded question. Assuming you are not a troller I will try to answer as best I can. Some schools of ethics rely on the presence of a higher power, while IMHO the more stable and logical schools follow the 'least amount of harm' philosophy. The question needs to be asked, will more harm come to society if we use embryonic stem cells or if we avoid them. In this case it seems to me that the answer is using them causes no harm, which is why the Canadian government cannot find a reason to ban the use of embryonic material
I didn't meant my question as a troll. Actually, I don't even understand why you're saying it's loaded. I guess I have a lot more reading to do.
But anyway, even with the "least amount of harm" idea, what's the plenary motivation for pursuing it? Is it basically that a person tries to work out and/or apply (in this case, medical) ethics with a goal of maximizing a feeling of moral goodness and/or minimizing feelings of guilt?
as my wife (who does research and writes articles in neuroscience) says: 90% of the research is to find something enough interesting to get more money for your researches.
It's not bad, it simply is how it works in science research. When you write an article, you always have to project your discovery into the future and tell how it will (not would) affect and save the life of many sick people, even if you know it will happen in 100 years at last.
Loftiest "That's what she said!" evar.
Is ethics the business of identifying rules regarding what we'd feel bad for having done, so that we can avoid guilty feelings?
I can kind of understand theists' reasons for striving to act in a moral/ethical way, but I've never gotten a clear explanation of why non-theists would put energy into ethics (medical ethics, in this case).
...You should budget at least as much for this as for clinical trials or production facilities. $5M is peanuts in this game.
I'll work for peanuts!
If one gathers data from many sources, in order to justify to the US FDA some claim about a drug: how can one certify that those data are accurate?
I was under the impression that despite its horrific flaws, the current regime requires the drug researchers to seriously vouch for the (subset of) the data they present to the FDA.
I too would want a PS3, but I won't buy one and wouldn't be able to afford the games so I would need to have it cracked. (Which is probably one huge reason they sell less.)
Actually, I bought one about a year ago so I could try out some programming on the Cell processor. But since it can dual-boot, I also bought a few games.
What I realized is that for most game genres, I just prefer a PC:
1. Develop console containing pretty cool hardware.
2. Make it hard to develop, while Microsoft and Nintendo have the opposite goal.
3. In the early years of the console, have many fewer good games than XBox360 does. So constantly be at risk of not reaching critical mass.
4. ???
5. Profit!
Sounds like Sony turned this into a SDK philosophy.
If a school district adopts Linux and open source then who is going to be the admin in charge of updates, patches, server, network, and desktop maintenance, etc?
who does it now? That is your answer. If they cant, then tell them, learn or we need to replace you. Magically they learn.
Or, magically things start going wrong with all of the Linux-related hardware.
People, especially in hard-to-fire governmental positions, can sometimes be stunningly vile.
Remember: a healthy industry has two major competitors slugging each other out at about 40% marketshare each, a third competitor between 15 and 20% marketshare, largely ignored by the first two, and then a myriad of minor competitors making up the rest of the market, filling niche needs in that market. A dominated, but not monopolistic, industry has its number one company at about 60% marketshare, a number two at 30-40%, a number three company trying to get double digit percentages, and possibly a few others eeking out their living in niche markets. The desktop operating system market is not anywhere near these. Microsoft is sitting over 80%, Mac is somewhere around 5-10%, and others are filling niche roles.
From where do those percentages come?
I would think that sacked software engineers would actually be more likely to start contributing to OSS ...
[I can't RTFA because of content filtering where I'm at right now. So I'm guessing about its contents.]
Even with him around, they barely contributed to the Mach kernel.
That's one helpdesk question per user every 10-20 minutes.. my god.
They should be proud. That's actually kind of low for a Microsoft shop.
Movie nerds are among the largest classes of nerds, dude.
Okay, fair point. But I just figured that /. was implicitly News for Technology Nerds; not other kinds of nerdiness.
I'm not going to enter an extended rant. But I do wish this kind of story didn't make the front page on /.
Google just got a DMCA takedown notice from Aquaman.
Man, this is the craziest PR leak strategy *ever*.
(If you say windows mac volume, I'm mailing a dead fish to your house).
Why, so it will attract the penguins?