No, they are not truly random. Nor is his dice machine, as the dice are possibly imperfect and subject to gravity or the way it reloads them into the hopper. Influences could be anywhere.
I think you're mixing bias (or whatever is the correct mathematical term) and randomness. Some of the number may be more likely to come up, ie. the distribution is not even (and it's even changing all the time as the dices get slowly worn out in the machine). But the result is still truly random, ie. result of each individual dice throw is totally unpredictable.
The influences are everywhere, which makes it truly random. Well unless universe itself is deterministic and nothing is random, but I think current view of quantum mechanics is that some things are truly random..
It's not a perfect RNG of course (uneven distribution is hard to compensate for, when it's not known accurately and is changing as the machine runs), but that's not same as non-random.
It's really hard for me to imagine any useful thing not having some "instinct" for self-preservation. Even cars have rev-limiters to prevent self-destruction. Even fairly basic robots have collision avoidance. Surely UAV's already do, or soon will, have code to prevent them from flying into the ground. As robots become more advanced and more autonomous, their self-preservation instincts will become more complex as well - and thus more liable to unforeseen consequences. This is all the more true of combat robots in the ultimate hostile environment; they're useless if they get taken out immediately.
That depends on design decisions. Self-preservation features might be purely mechanical and separate from the self-aware AI "brain". In fact, thinking of designing such an AI, I think some other features would be made primary (such as fulfilling the mission), and self-preservation would be at a low priority. Just think about a self-aware missile AI, trying to avoid the counter measures to die where it wants (ie. intended target of the missile).
And actually this applies us humans, too. Preserving one's offspring might often be higher priority for a human than self-preservation, for example. Or to continue missile example above, kamikaze pilots in their planes were essentially self-aware missiles.
Also, if you consider biological-type evolution of self-aware machines, I'd think that bad kind of self-preservation tendencies would result in termination of those AIs by humans. In other words, their evolution would not favor self-preservation, it would favor traits that would make humans to duplicate them more (or to let them self-replicate more).
So, a flat head screw driver is a shortcoming of a philips screwn driver?
Use the right tool for the job. If windows is the one, then use it.
Desktop operating system isn't a tool, it's the equivalent of a workbench. The whatever software is the tool. If some tool can't be used on some workbench, then I'd say it's shortcoming of that workbench. Of course you can still say "use the right workbench for the job", but it's same as saying "use a better workbench for the job", since purpose of a workbench is to be able to handle all jobs.
It is only zero if the cost of building and maintaining the infrastructure needed to make that call is zero. The reason why SMS, in certain ways looking at it, is costless, is that it was made possible as a software-only addon the existing mobile infrastructure. There is no extra cost to also deliver or receive SMS from a handset that already has the ability to make or receive calls, since the ability to make calls is dependent on the handshake-traffic that, as a side effect, also can deliver SMS.
Obligatory stupid analogy: The UPS-guy delivering a parcel to you might give you a short oral message from someone whom he has picked up another parcel from without it costing UPS a tenth of a cent, if this message is short enough to not delay him. Thus the cost of him delivering you this message was zero.
If SMS messages could be sent only to handsets within the same network cell, then that analogy would apply. However, in reality it's a different UPS guy who hears the message, and a different delivery guy, possibly working for a different delivery company, possibly in a different country, possibly a week later, that must deliver the message to intended recipient. Now does it still sound like it should be a free service?
SMS isn't a software-only add-on to mobile networks, it also needs the hardware to store the messages while they wait for delivery. And then it needs the contracts between operators to make the delivery work inside a country, and then roaming agreements to make the delivery work worldwide.
The operators must pay the network infrastructure maker to have the SMS capability, when they buy the network. It's quite natural that the network company doesn't develop the SMS capability for free, and quite natural that the network operator does want to make profit when they invest in SMS capability.
And also sending SMS messages does cause extra traffic that would not happen without the SMS. I'm pretty sure the handset and the base station don't talk to each other every second because it would eat the handset battery. Yet SMS messages are usually delivered in a second. Therefore they must cause extra traffic, ie. they are not sent piggybacking other control messages.
I don't really see any point of view where user-to-user delivery of SMS messages could be considered "free".
It's not really true that the cost is just the electricity. The more traffic the network has, the more and better base stations you need. This is infrastructure cost, but it may need upgrades, and definitely needs maintenance.
Of course, but this applies to text messages, too. The more messages are sent, the more SMS specific infrastructure (like storage and routing hardware and software) needs to be bought and maintained.
SMS is clean: no risk of having to retrieve large attachements, hardly any spam due to sender costs
wouldnt the sender of spam have an unlimited texting account or use some email-to-text service?
Yes. And then the spammer would get taken down, or the email-to-text service will no longer be accepted by the operators after enough of their customers complain about spam. It's not just the cost, it's also the traceability. And it works, there's hardly any SMS spam.
Although email is extremely quick is still requires loading unlike text messages, but as mentioned, text messages conveniently cut off at 160 characters when you are trying to send a message that is 163 characters. Come on 4G get here already.
Uh, get a newer phone. I don't know if it's just a Nokia thing, or more universal (I believe it is), but long SMS messages are supported. In practice the phone sends long text in many messages and with some codes, so the target phone can put them together again (and if it can't then it'll see them as separate messages, with a bit of garbage but completely readable). Completely transparent to the sender and mostly (depending on the phone) transparent to the receiver.
Actually, SMS is like a "stowaway" of a signal your cell must receive from time to time. So the "real" cost of a SMS is 0.000000.
This is a broadly known fact.
Just like the "real" cost of a phone call is also practically zero for the operator, as the extra electricity used for one call is basically nothing. So every call charged by minute is pure profit for the operator.
Which is (partly) why there are packages with a lot of free minutes and messages. At least in Finland, for around 50 eur / month you can even have unlimited audio and video calls, unlimited SMS and MMS messages and unlimited 3G data.
Evolutionary speaking, humans are long distance runners. We walk upright on two legs, so that our endurance is maximized. A fit human can catch just about anything just by following its tracks until it is too exhausted to keep going.
A good running shoe (for "normal" feet) is something that tries to interfere as little as possible with normal human running ability.
It's not stealing - stealing is taking something away from someone. The software house still have a copy of the game on their servers.
So if you copy my code and put it into your own software without permission, I'm wrong to say you stole my code? Well, you're free to have that opinion, but I'll still call anybody stealing my code like that a thief.
When copyright defenders use the term theft it is quite clear that they are using it in the most derogatory manner that they know how - they do not, in my opinion, refer to the harmless colloquial meaning that you describe above but they refer directly to unethical theft that robs someone else of their lawful property. It is therefore this meaning that needs to be attacked.
Um... How is software piracy ethically different from stealing material goods? Or for that matter, different from copying (I'd say stealing) somebody's code or art by copying it without permission? I'd say they're all in the same class, ethically speaking (material theft can be very minor too, like stealing candy or pocket change or a cigarette).
I think you've got it wrong - stealing isn't getting something you don't deserve, it's depriving someone of something they *do* deserve. Both of your examples seem to agree with my point.
If somebody copies my code and puts it into their software without my permission, I'd say they're stealing my code, even if I'm not deprived of anything I'd have if they didn't copy it.
If somebody copies my school work or part of it and present it as their own, I'd say they're stealing my work, even if I'm not deprived of anything I would have if they didn't copy it.
Do you think I'm wrong to call either of these acts stealing?
I might even get something out of a similar case, yet I'd still say they stole my code/essay/results/whatever.
Final example: If I let somebody copy digital photos of my girlfriend I know I have no right to give away, I and my friend are stealing those photos. And if the stuff being copied isn't digital photos but software, then it doesn't stop it from being stealing.
No, that's not my argument. My argument is very simple: Pirating software is taking something you're neither supposed (as intended by the creator) nor allowed (as defined by law) to take without paying for it. Taking something in this way is stealing. Therefore piracy is stealing.
Is this some sort of ethical argument based upon the idea that the law is always ethically correct?
No.
Ethics doesn't have very much to do with this. There are circumstances where stealing is ethically acceptable (IMHO, YMMV), but that doesn't change it being stealing.
Both stealing time and stealing a girlfriend means taking a _limited resource_ from someone. Making a copy of software is not the same, it does not affect any existing item. That is why it is not stealing / theft, but copyright violations.
If somebody copies my code into their own without my permission (or a more special case, without following GPL or BSD license if my code is licensed that way), I'll certainly call it "stealing my code", no matter what it's called in the law.
Do you disagree with this, do you think that I'm wrong to think they stole my code? What would you call it, please fill in the blank: "you bastard, you ____ my code".
If you agree that copying my source can be called stealing, then how can you disagree about compiled code, or all the art (graphics and music) included in a game?
Thats great, except in both of those "stealing" arguments, you are depriving someone of something tangeable by taking it away from them.
With piracy you havent taken anything away from anyone.
Ideas aren't tangible. Most ideas won't ever be used. Yet those ideas can be stolen.
The argument that you have taken money away from the developers by pirating the game doesnt even hold, as you cant say with certainty that everyone who pirated the game would have purchased it.
No, that's not my argument. My argument is very simple: Pirating software is taking something you're neither supposed (as intended by the creator) nor allowed (as defined by law) to take without paying for it. Taking something in this way is stealing. Therefore piracy is stealing.
Not at all unlikely. In many games with a strong online component, competitive players in particular want to get in right from the start. Since only one retailer broke the street date, customers of other retailers were left with the choice of pirating the game or giving Gamestop customers an unfair 1 week head start.
Let's hope this is the case.
The argument against DRM is that it diminishes the value of the product for customers who get it legitimately. You effectively punish your customers for giving you money. Pirated versions don't have DRM and exist regardless of the DRM on the retail copies.
Indeed, DRM is evil. I don't buy (or play) games with stupid DRM. Needless to say, I haven't bought or played many commercial PC games lately...
(And no, copyright infringement is not stealing.)
Yes it is, though not as defined in the law of a country (but I bet there are exceptions). "Stealing" means taking something you're not supposed to take or get. Piracy certainly meets this defintion, as do many other things named differently in the law, or not mentioned in any law at all.
No, it wouldn't be stealing, it would be breaking copyright and eventually also breaking into their systems since they don't have legitimate access.
It wouldn't be theft as defined in law, but it most certainly is stealing in the colloquial meaning of the word. Stealing can mean an awful lot of things, just consider "stealing time" or "stealing a girlfriend". Thinking piracy isn't stealing is just self-delusion, trying to justify ones immoral actions.
Now now, let's not jump to conclusions. I'm sure all of those 100000 pirates just want to test the game before buying. All of them will either stop playing, or they'll buy a legal copy.
What, you think they won't? Ooh, but that would be... stealing? They'd never!
Except if it's an airplane... Because if it breaks, you might be too busy screaming on your way down to fix it then.
Same actually applies to many businesses, including game business. The trick is to know when to fix it. Fortunately airplane service manuals and air traffic regulations tell when to fix an airplane. Unfortunately there aren't such manuals for running a business.
One claim that we've heard often -- even after the decision -- is that the new elections do not matter, because the party situations would not change. Well, they were missing the minor issue that in Finland the election system is based on voting on persons, not parties.
The election system is primarily based on voting the party, and only secondarily based on voting the person inside the party. Thinking it's about voting a person is wrong, meaning it makes people vote for the wrong reasons, even against what they believe in. The vote goes first to the party, so first thing for a voter is to choose a party. Then the voter can choose a candidate inside that party to support, but that's not as important as choosing the party.
It's less important both because even if you favorite candidate does get in, they're likely to act according to party line, and because it's quite possible your candidate doesn't get in, in which case your vote only benefits the party in the end.
Interestingly, the land ice exerts a gravitational force on the surrounding water. This causes the sea level to rise in the vicinity of the ice. If the land ice melts than the sea level will drop (locally at least).
Uh... If the sea level drops locally, then it means that the water goes elsewhere, ie. the sea level rises globally.
We make all our choices based on external stimuli, which are largely beyond our control. Of all the philosophical nonsense that's bandied about, the whole "fate vs free will" debate is the most exasperating. "Free will" is an artifact of the limits of our perception, and nothing more. Every "choice" we make is nothing more than a cascade of logic (in the electronics/programming sense) based on running recent perceptions through a network of previously conceived notions and instinctual prewiring. It's all completely deterministic.
Our current mainstream view of physical universe says that the universe itself is not deterministic because of quantum uncertainity. Therefore our behaviour can't be deterministic either. In other words, there is no such thing as a pure, deterministic "cascade of logic". If the parts are big enough and the logic simple enough (both physically and temporally), then it can be very deterministic, but there's always the risk of something unexptected changing the outcome (say, a cosmic event obliterating the planet containing the logic).
That's the paradox of nuclear weapons: you need to have them so you don't have the need to use 'em.
It's not a paradox. Si vis pacem, para bellum - that's been known for millenia.
But it's only really true with nuclear weapons. Every other weapon has been used in war by both sides, nuclear weapons are the first mutually unusable weapons.
Things would be different if one country could have developed a nuclear arsenal and delivery technology to wipe out any other country, before any other country could have nuclear weapons. Then that one country could have prevented anybody else from getting nukes, by using nukes to halt any nuclear development. I don't know how close this scenario was with US, but I bet there were some military types in the US, who would have wanted to invade Russia using nukes before Russia got their own weapons...
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No, they are not truly random. Nor is his dice machine, as the dice are possibly imperfect and subject to gravity or the way it reloads them into the hopper. Influences could be anywhere.
I think you're mixing bias (or whatever is the correct mathematical term) and randomness. Some of the number may be more likely to come up, ie. the distribution is not even (and it's even changing all the time as the dices get slowly worn out in the machine). But the result is still truly random, ie. result of each individual dice throw is totally unpredictable.
The influences are everywhere, which makes it truly random. Well unless universe itself is deterministic and nothing is random, but I think current view of quantum mechanics is that some things are truly random..
It's not a perfect RNG of course (uneven distribution is hard to compensate for, when it's not known accurately and is changing as the machine runs), but that's not same as non-random.
It's really hard for me to imagine any useful thing not having some "instinct" for self-preservation. Even cars have rev-limiters to prevent self-destruction. Even fairly basic robots have collision avoidance. Surely UAV's already do, or soon will, have code to prevent them from flying into the ground. As robots become more advanced and more autonomous, their self-preservation instincts will become more complex as well - and thus more liable to unforeseen consequences. This is all the more true of combat robots in the ultimate hostile environment; they're useless if they get taken out immediately.
That depends on design decisions. Self-preservation features might be purely mechanical and separate from the self-aware AI "brain". In fact, thinking of designing such an AI, I think some other features would be made primary (such as fulfilling the mission), and self-preservation would be at a low priority. Just think about a self-aware missile AI, trying to avoid the counter measures to die where it wants (ie. intended target of the missile).
And actually this applies us humans, too. Preserving one's offspring might often be higher priority for a human than self-preservation, for example. Or to continue missile example above, kamikaze pilots in their planes were essentially self-aware missiles.
Also, if you consider biological-type evolution of self-aware machines, I'd think that bad kind of self-preservation tendencies would result in termination of those AIs by humans. In other words, their evolution would not favor self-preservation, it would favor traits that would make humans to duplicate them more (or to let them self-replicate more).
So, a flat head screw driver is a shortcoming of a philips screwn driver?
Use the right tool for the job. If windows is the one, then use it.
Desktop operating system isn't a tool, it's the equivalent of a workbench. The whatever software is the tool. If some tool can't be used on some workbench, then I'd say it's shortcoming of that workbench. Of course you can still say "use the right workbench for the job", but it's same as saying "use a better workbench for the job", since purpose of a workbench is to be able to handle all jobs.
It is only zero if the cost of building and maintaining the infrastructure needed to make that call is zero.
The reason why SMS, in certain ways looking at it, is costless, is that it was made possible as a software-only addon the existing mobile infrastructure.
There is no extra cost to also deliver or receive SMS from a handset that already has the ability to make or receive calls, since the ability to make calls is dependent on the handshake-traffic that, as a side effect, also can deliver SMS.
Obligatory stupid analogy:
The UPS-guy delivering a parcel to you might give you a short oral message from someone whom he has picked up another parcel from without it costing UPS a tenth of a cent, if this message is short enough to not delay him.
Thus the cost of him delivering you this message was zero.
If SMS messages could be sent only to handsets within the same network cell, then that analogy would apply. However, in reality it's a different UPS guy who hears the message, and a different delivery guy, possibly working for a different delivery company, possibly in a different country, possibly a week later, that must deliver the message to intended recipient. Now does it still sound like it should be a free service?
SMS isn't a software-only add-on to mobile networks, it also needs the hardware to store the messages while they wait for delivery. And then it needs the contracts between operators to make the delivery work inside a country, and then roaming agreements to make the delivery work worldwide.
The operators must pay the network infrastructure maker to have the SMS capability, when they buy the network. It's quite natural that the network company doesn't develop the SMS capability for free, and quite natural that the network operator does want to make profit when they invest in SMS capability.
And also sending SMS messages does cause extra traffic that would not happen without the SMS. I'm pretty sure the handset and the base station don't talk to each other every second because it would eat the handset battery. Yet SMS messages are usually delivered in a second. Therefore they must cause extra traffic, ie. they are not sent piggybacking other control messages.
I don't really see any point of view where user-to-user delivery of SMS messages could be considered "free".
It's not really true that the cost is just the electricity. The more traffic the network has, the more and better base stations you need. This is infrastructure cost, but it may need upgrades, and definitely needs maintenance.
Of course, but this applies to text messages, too. The more messages are sent, the more SMS specific infrastructure (like storage and routing hardware and software) needs to be bought and maintained.
SMS is clean: no risk of having to retrieve large attachements, hardly any spam due to sender costs
wouldnt the sender of spam have an unlimited texting account or use some email-to-text service?
Yes. And then the spammer would get taken down, or the email-to-text service will no longer be accepted by the operators after enough of their customers complain about spam. It's not just the cost, it's also the traceability. And it works, there's hardly any SMS spam.
Although email is extremely quick is still requires loading unlike text messages, but as mentioned, text messages conveniently cut off at 160 characters when you are trying to send a message that is 163 characters. Come on 4G get here already.
Uh, get a newer phone. I don't know if it's just a Nokia thing, or more universal (I believe it is), but long SMS messages are supported. In practice the phone sends long text in many messages and with some codes, so the target phone can put them together again (and if it can't then it'll see them as separate messages, with a bit of garbage but completely readable). Completely transparent to the sender and mostly (depending on the phone) transparent to the receiver.
Actually, SMS is like a "stowaway" of a signal your cell must receive from time to time.
So the "real" cost of a SMS is 0.000000.
This is a broadly known fact.
Just like the "real" cost of a phone call is also practically zero for the operator, as the extra electricity used for one call is basically nothing. So every call charged by minute is pure profit for the operator.
Which is (partly) why there are packages with a lot of free minutes and messages. At least in Finland, for around 50 eur / month you can even have unlimited audio and video calls, unlimited SMS and MMS messages and unlimited 3G data.
Evolutionary speaking, humans are long distance runners. We walk upright on two legs, so that our endurance is maximized. A fit human can catch just about anything just by following its tracks until it is too exhausted to keep going.
A good running shoe (for "normal" feet) is something that tries to interfere as little as possible with normal human running ability.
It's not stealing - stealing is taking something away from someone. The software house still have a copy of the game on their servers.
So if you copy my code and put it into your own software without permission, I'm wrong to say you stole my code? Well, you're free to have that opinion, but I'll still call anybody stealing my code like that a thief.
When copyright defenders use the term theft it is quite clear that they are using it in the most derogatory manner that they know how - they do not, in my opinion, refer to the harmless colloquial meaning that you describe above but they refer directly to unethical theft that robs someone else of their lawful property. It is therefore this meaning that needs to be attacked.
Um... How is software piracy ethically different from stealing material goods? Or for that matter, different from copying (I'd say stealing) somebody's code or art by copying it without permission? I'd say they're all in the same class, ethically speaking (material theft can be very minor too, like stealing candy or pocket change or a cigarette).
I think you've got it wrong - stealing isn't getting something you don't deserve, it's depriving someone of something they *do* deserve. Both of your examples seem to agree with my point.
If somebody copies my code and puts it into their software without my permission, I'd say they're stealing my code, even if I'm not deprived of anything I'd have if they didn't copy it.
If somebody copies my school work or part of it and present it as their own, I'd say they're stealing my work, even if I'm not deprived of anything I would have if they didn't copy it.
Do you think I'm wrong to call either of these acts stealing?
I might even get something out of a similar case, yet I'd still say they stole my code/essay/results/whatever.
Final example: If I let somebody copy digital photos of my girlfriend I know I have no right to give away, I and my friend are stealing those photos. And if the stuff being copied isn't digital photos but software, then it doesn't stop it from being stealing.
"the other team is KILLING us"
"the other team is MURDERING us"
I see no difference in meaning.
What's your point?
Act of copying can be act of stealing (colloquial). Of course you're free interpret this differently, but that's just your interpretation.
No, that's not my argument. My argument is very simple: Pirating software is taking something you're neither supposed (as intended by the creator) nor allowed (as defined by law) to take without paying for it. Taking something in this way is stealing. Therefore piracy is stealing.
Is this some sort of ethical argument based upon the idea that the law is always ethically correct?
No.
Ethics doesn't have very much to do with this. There are circumstances where stealing is ethically acceptable (IMHO, YMMV), but that doesn't change it being stealing.
Both stealing time and stealing a girlfriend means taking a _limited resource_ from someone. Making a copy of software is not the same, it does not affect any existing item. That is why it is not stealing / theft, but copyright violations.
If somebody copies my code into their own without my permission (or a more special case, without following GPL or BSD license if my code is licensed that way), I'll certainly call it "stealing my code", no matter what it's called in the law.
Do you disagree with this, do you think that I'm wrong to think they stole my code? What would you call it, please fill in the blank: "you bastard, you ____ my code".
If you agree that copying my source can be called stealing, then how can you disagree about compiled code, or all the art (graphics and music) included in a game?
Thats great, except in both of those "stealing" arguments, you are depriving someone of something tangeable by taking it away from them.
With piracy you havent taken anything away from anyone.
Ideas aren't tangible. Most ideas won't ever be used. Yet those ideas can be stolen.
The argument that you have taken money away from the developers by pirating the game doesnt even hold, as you cant say with certainty that everyone who pirated the game would have purchased it.
No, that's not my argument. My argument is very simple: Pirating software is taking something you're neither supposed (as intended by the creator) nor allowed (as defined by law) to take without paying for it. Taking something in this way is stealing. Therefore piracy is stealing.
Not at all unlikely. In many games with a strong online component, competitive players in particular want to get in right from the start. Since only one retailer broke the street date, customers of other retailers were left with the choice of pirating the game or giving Gamestop customers an unfair 1 week head start.
Let's hope this is the case.
The argument against DRM is that it diminishes the value of the product for customers who get it legitimately. You effectively punish your customers for giving you money. Pirated versions don't have DRM and exist regardless of the DRM on the retail copies.
Indeed, DRM is evil. I don't buy (or play) games with stupid DRM. Needless to say, I haven't bought or played many commercial PC games lately...
(And no, copyright infringement is not stealing.)
Yes it is, though not as defined in the law of a country (but I bet there are exceptions). "Stealing" means taking something you're not supposed to take or get. Piracy certainly meets this defintion, as do many other things named differently in the law, or not mentioned in any law at all.
No, it wouldn't be stealing, it would be breaking copyright and eventually also breaking into their systems since they don't have legitimate access.
It wouldn't be theft as defined in law, but it most certainly is stealing in the colloquial meaning of the word. Stealing can mean an awful lot of things, just consider "stealing time" or "stealing a girlfriend". Thinking piracy isn't stealing is just self-delusion, trying to justify ones immoral actions.
Now now, let's not jump to conclusions. I'm sure all of those 100000 pirates just want to test the game before buying. All of them will either stop playing, or they'll buy a legal copy.
What, you think they won't? Ooh, but that would be... stealing? They'd never!
If it ain't broke...don't fix it.
Except if it's an airplane... Because if it breaks, you might be too busy screaming on your way down to fix it then.
Same actually applies to many businesses, including game business. The trick is to know when to fix it. Fortunately airplane service manuals and air traffic regulations tell when to fix an airplane. Unfortunately there aren't such manuals for running a business.
One claim that we've heard often -- even after the decision -- is that the new elections do not matter, because the party situations would not change. Well, they were missing the minor issue that in Finland the election system is based on voting on persons, not parties.
The election system is primarily based on voting the party, and only secondarily based on voting the person inside the party. Thinking it's about voting a person is wrong, meaning it makes people vote for the wrong reasons, even against what they believe in. The vote goes first to the party, so first thing for a voter is to choose a party. Then the voter can choose a candidate inside that party to support, but that's not as important as choosing the party.
It's less important both because even if you favorite candidate does get in, they're likely to act according to party line, and because it's quite possible your candidate doesn't get in, in which case your vote only benefits the party in the end.
Interestingly, the land ice exerts a gravitational force on the surrounding water. This causes the sea level to rise in the vicinity of the ice. If the land ice melts than the sea level will drop (locally at least).
Uh... If the sea level drops locally, then it means that the water goes elsewhere, ie. the sea level rises globally.
We make all our choices based on external stimuli, which are largely beyond our control. Of all the philosophical nonsense that's bandied about, the whole "fate vs free will" debate is the most exasperating. "Free will" is an artifact of the limits of our perception, and nothing more. Every "choice" we make is nothing more than a cascade of logic (in the electronics/programming sense) based on running recent perceptions through a network of previously conceived notions and instinctual prewiring. It's all completely deterministic.
Our current mainstream view of physical universe says that the universe itself is not deterministic because of quantum uncertainity. Therefore our behaviour can't be deterministic either. In other words, there is no such thing as a pure, deterministic "cascade of logic". If the parts are big enough and the logic simple enough (both physically and temporally), then it can be very deterministic, but there's always the risk of something unexptected changing the outcome (say, a cosmic event obliterating the planet containing the logic).
That's the paradox of nuclear weapons: you need to have them so you don't have the need to use 'em.
It's not a paradox. Si vis pacem, para bellum - that's been known for millenia.
But it's only really true with nuclear weapons. Every other weapon has been used in war by both sides, nuclear weapons are the first mutually unusable weapons.
Things would be different if one country could have developed a nuclear arsenal and delivery technology to wipe out any other country, before any other country could have nuclear weapons. Then that one country could have prevented anybody else from getting nukes, by using nukes to halt any nuclear development. I don't know how close this scenario was with US, but I bet there were some military types in the US, who would have wanted to invade Russia using nukes before Russia got their own weapons...