How about a fully-much direct quote? That's my personal preference for quotes, anyway.
Though it's more a question of editorial integrity than convenience, and I have only marginal interest in what Rep. Paul Broun says, out of curiosity I watched it. Granted, including "all that stuff I was taught about" didn't add much in terms of clarity.
"...on evolution, embryology, and the big bang theory as 'lies straight from the pit of Hell.'"
By the way, it would be nice if the quote was an actual quote. Bear in mind that the Big Bang was initially proposed by a Catholic physicist/priest, and was roundly attacked as "anti-science" for sounding to much like Genesis, in contrast to the then-prevailing Steady State theory of the universe.
It's not clear to me what would be objectionable about embryology per se from any theistic stance, and it's really only scientifically-untestable "-only- evolutionary processes occur" that poses a conflict for some views of theism. When I see a semi-quote like this one, I tend to think there's a bit of bias involved with the citation...
"Patent disputes like [the Apple-Samsung case] are a natural characteristic of a vigorously competitive industry."
And that only companies on a scale like Apple, Samsung, and... IBM can be competitive in any patent-portfolio showdown, is not.
Though, he seems to like using terms that can't actually fail to be the case, given how he uses them. Yes, there is "industry". Yes, it is "competitive"--increasingly within an oligopoly.
The next one is better, though.
"If patent litigation caused by the U.S. patent system stifled innovation, U.S. software companies would not be the most successful in the world."
a) The broad software industry did not reach the point it is at with such patent battles being mainstream, and...
b) If we had a single software company in the U.S., that is "most successful" compared to its equivalent in each other country, is that satisfactory, in reality, as opposed to per how his sentence is phrased?
Unfortunately, per usual, the worst enemy of free-market capitalism, is capitalists, as it's almost always to a large company's net advantage to have a general impediment applied to everyone--which will cost them, but also eliminate the smaller competition via those costs. The cost of lawyers, handily, being among such general impediments.
He could code (and in multiple languages), in contrast to, say, Steve Jobs.
From what I've read of the experiences of other coders/designers/architects, he had the in-depth technical acumen to make a one-on-one development review a very detailed and rather harrowing experience, as well.
How can you argue that it was somehow outside the legal system?
I can argue it because the direct quotes provided by someone well-versed in the situation indicate that was the case. If you want to claim that any act taken by anyone in supposed authority is the result of a "legal system", I'll venture to say, again, most would disagree with you. A dictator is outside of a "process of law", as commonly understood. That's why people, without irony, refer to "rogue states". Simply being in power does not give ones actions the imprimatur of a valid legal process.
I just think your reasoning is lacking on how it substantially differs from other similar sorts of actions that allowed for mass-killings of otherwise innocent people within a legal framework.
We were "there" because picked up the digression-from-a-digression that you apparently liked arguing better, actually. My rationale was clear and straightforward from the outset. We could very reasonably assume that the women and children killed by the Atomic Bombs would inevitably kill, or aid in the killing, of more people in countries toward which Japan was the aggressor, given the political system they lived under. This is directly analogous to the case in the OT, with the added factor we aren't just quite sure they would, but absolutely sure they would, if we accept God ordered based on the foreknowledge that is implicit in the situation we are evaluating. Even without that, further justification is not required, and, again, you can do your own personal survey on whether Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified as a wartime act against an aggressor nation, in the alternative to ongoing fighting and death on both sides, and you can ask if these were acts of "murder". I am very confident of what the outcome of your survey will be.
He didn't perpetrate those acts to further "Atheism".
Such was indeed his claim, as leader of a nation formally atheistic and pursuing a formally-atheistic agenda. It just didn't work out being differentiable in practice from totalitarian power-seeking, either for his theistic or his atheistic victims. Can we, though, cut back a little on your psychic awareness of motivations, and get back to the rationale based on outcomes? Again, there is no problem justifying the deaths of some in an aggressor nation to save many more. That's what's before you, no psychic judgments as to the supposed motivations required.
But they were advocating their actions as being specifically for their religion. I don't see how you can say that Christians are somehow definitively against mass-murder when so much of history is filled with Christians committing it, and specifically doing so in the name of God...
By reference to the content of the belief. Again, your protestations notwithstanding, you have demonstrated no case of mass-murder being advocated by the bible, for the reasons thoroughly given and valid. If you want to assert it again, fine, but it will remain an invalid characterization for the same reasons as before. If any philosophy's document says "Don't do X", and you blatantly do X, you are -not- following the philosophy, whatever your claims may be. You seem to be conflating the worldview's definition with people's success at performing it. This is invalid. If Tibetan monks take a vow of silence, and then starts a talk-radio program, one does not say that the talk-radio programs are core to the belief system--one validly says the it isn't, is contrary to the vow, and the practitioner has failed to practice it correctly--exactly as you would for -every other viewpoint- than your special-case of when talking about religions you don't like.
You still need to justify God's killing of first-borns in Egypt as not-mass-murder.
Not really. I might have a need to do so if you had anything resembling any moral or practical authority stemming from anything you've presented. You don't. God gave us life, God can take that away. N
Sorry, but on this issue, I'll take Nikita Khruschev's recounting of history over yours, as he was probably a little more familiar with the situation than you.
After the criminal murder of S. M. Kirov, mass repressions and brutal acts of violation of Socialist legality began. On the evening of December 1, 1934, on Stalin's initiative (without the approval of the Political Bureau - which was passed 2 days later, casually) the Secretary of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee, Yenukidze, signed the following directive:...
This directive became the basis for mass acts of abuse against Socialist legality.
An example of vile provocation of odious falsification and of criminal violation of revolutionary legality is the case of the former candidate for the central committee political bureau, one of the most eminent workers of the party and of the Soviet Government, Comrade Eikhe, who was a party member since 1905.
You can't quite seem to win on any point, can you? You're just making assertions of its ethical status, in the face of you agreeing with a directly-equivalent action in WW2. And, do note, emptily using the term "ethical" neither means you've connected your assertion to any demonstrated system of ethical axioms, nor, well, that you have the slightest idea what you mean when using the term "ethical", other than philosophically parasiting off of -my- metaphysical justification by cultural assimilation of the norms of theism. Yes, I actually do know at least a dozen formalized systems of proposed secular-based ethics, and their respective weaknesses. You completely defaulting on justifying your characterizations -at all-, drawing from the resources of -your worldview-, isn't even getting started on what you need to do here.
Again, still waiting for any objection you care to forward on the basis of evolution, or anything to give your self-contradicting subjective utterances any weight at all. Until then, carry on as the sole party here advocating mass-murder.
"Thou shalt not kill" is properly rendered as "you shall not murder", as it meaning the general case cannot be supported by reference to the rest of the Old Testament. Though some English translations render this as "kill" along with "murder", going to the original Hebrew makes this distinction clearer.
Prohibitions of suicide that some denominations have, are inferential interpretations. As I said, there are no direct prohibitions of suicide, and when it has been recounted to have occurred with figures in the bible, no censure of the act is stated.
This leaves us with evaluating the circumstance according to broader religious principles of caring for people's welfare--and in cases where a person has concluded their Earthly existence is worse than not having it, I cannot see condemning it, as the bible does not.
From my understanding of the situation at that time, I would provisionally agree with the action taken. My agreement with that action doesn't mean it wasn't murder. It absolutely was. Murder on a grand scale. Just that on the balance, it was very likely the best of bad options. I'm ok with the fact that I can ethically say "mass-murder is sometimes justified and can be the correct action." You don't seem to have reached that point.
Let's simplify at this point, for efficiency.
By your own words, you advocate mass-murder, with unspecified qualifications, presumably left up to your feelings at the time.
You are the only entity related to this discussion that is taking the position that mass-murder is acceptable. The situation in the bible was not mass-murder, for the reasons I've given, and even if it were, you do not categorically reject it, by your own words.
Based on the discussion to date, the only advocate of mass-murder involved here--between you, me, religious believers, and God--is you. On that basis, there is nothing further to be gained from the discussion.
If you wish further verification of this...
And do not cite the legal system or warfare. Those are, by definition, not murder. Killing your own citizens to expand your clique's political power, that -is- murder.
Ask ten people around you if these circumstances properly and definitionally alter the question of whether someone being put to death is "murder":
1. The death occurs under the authority of the country's legal system
2. The death occurs in wartime, under authorized orders
Even in the case of your cited Stalinist Russia, it was not pretended that the deaths occurred under a process of law. To be precise, the circumstance was implicitly "I am ordering this. I either need not, or do not, care if it is murder." That doesn't alter the fact that executions specified at the end of a process of law are not murder.
Stallman's idea is very compatible with a notion of reversing the reversal of the original intent of patents that has happened in the modern corporate business environment.
The main necessity of patents in the past was specifically the differential between the capabilities of the individual or small company, and the large established company, to take a concept from initial concept/implementation to large-scale production. That differential was, in large part, the reason why the market in itself was not trusted to sort out the situation. The inventor was the source of the product, but apart from an enforced "protected time period", established industry could simply take the idea and immediately outproduce the inventor, due to the very nature of mass-production and distribution of physical goods, thus "winning" via the basic nature of that market.
Arguably, in software this core rationale for patents no longer applies. Reproducing the invention (e.g. copying the files) costs essentially nothing, and so no entity has a pre-existing "unfair advantage" in transitioning a new product from the point of initial creation to the point of mass-production.
In the absence of this differential, we have the spectacle of modern patents, where it is no longer used to help the "small company" (or individual) against the "big companies" in addressing this production-capacity differential, but instead are used by large corporations against other large corporations, neither of which has any differential in intrinsic capacity needing to be addressed. The net result is preventing public-benefitting "inventions" from being used by anyone except their corporation, when it doesn't have the effect of stopping any benefit from the innovations at all--due to the risk of creating anything with armies of patent-troll lawyers laying in wait.
So... yeah. Agreed. Software -is- different. And it is different in precisely the core attribute that justified patents in the first place.
Some lessons were learned, if only the priority to isolate to somebody else the selling company's risks. Around 20 years ago my first "real" software job was writing software to interface PC GUI-based monitoring/nursing-operation software to another Very Large Very Well Known Company's infusion pumps. Along with all the software implementation expectations they had of the 8-person company I worked for, a major priority of theirs was ensuring we developed a "Failure Mode Effects Analysis" document. Essentially, that involved our company non-optionally documenting (and thereby taking the risk for), every conceivable way the overall system could break (inclusive of their pumps breaking), and detailing specifics on how it wouldn't break (in a manner that could conceivably put a patient at risk) even if it broke, for all those hypothetical circumstances. My introduction to the world of theoretically-impossible engineering tasks, and the politics of making sure those tasks are the responsibility of Other People, started early...
Then present some evidence of that. Solving analogies is much, much harder than guessing at a probable appropriate word to pick (prefixed with "Who/what is a...") after running the question string into Google and doing a statistical analysis of the words in the Top 1000 search results.
Firstly, understand that the concept "genocide" came into existence in 1943, and for all the previous millennia of both Eastern and Western philosophy, both religious and secular, it didn't arise that this term was perceived as meaningful in a way that was necessary, or even useful, for ethical questions from any of these perspectives. Indeed, if you're going to kill a lot of people, them all being of the same ethnicity doesn't seem to be a morally central factor in evaluating it. However, as we both know, you don't think it is either--if nothing else, I assume you'd have to agree that if a culture had 1000 members, killing all of them would not be made worse for that reason alone than killing 10000 people from different cultures. I again submit that the -sole- reason you are using the term, is to -imply-, disingenuously, an "innocent victim" status to the people being discussed, not because it's validly part of "genocide", but because you know that's what people will assume when hearing the term.
Before I proceed, let me ask, do you agree with, or disagree with, the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? These actions certainly also killed large numbers of "innocent" women and children. It was done on the basis of winning the war, and that, quite simply, these women and children would in the future continue to be either supporters of, or active participants in, the continued killing of the members of other countries, which they were the initial aggressors. Since on that basis, that is was -extremely probable- that this would be the future of those people, by virtue of the nature of their culture (e.g. the totalitarian political system of Japan at the time), are you prepared to say that this bombardment was not legitimately an act of self-defense? When we have your answer to that, then we can look at it in the religious context you're somewhat-accepting, somewhat-rejecting based on whatever best furthers rejecting the religion in totality. In that context, given the assumptions we must make to discuss decisions within it, it was not merely highly probable that the people killed would continue to kill or aid in the killing of the countries they initiated attacks on, but -certain- they would, as a consequence of God's omniscience. If you're going to argue some of it should be taken as factual for the purpose of evaluating the ethical situation, you need to evaluate that situation in the context of -all- of it, as it is presented to be. This is inclusive of the foreknowledge that says, we can move beyond valid the human opinion that it most probably will save more lives that it will cost, in the case of WW2 Japan, to this context where we -know- it will save those lives. That's the context under discussion--certainty of saving more than will be lost, though mere strong probability is sufficient to justify both actions within the Christian ethical system, and other ethical systems as well, such as Consequentialism and Utilitarianism.
You're a bit all all over the map here in terms of what you are arguing against. My statement was that "you shall not (mass) murder" is a defining norm of the belief system, and that statement remains correct, even if you are indecisive as to whether you want to claim the bible is contradictory on this point, or definitely says the opposite of what it says. It is a defining norm, and the actions against the Amakelites was neither mass-murder, nor murder, with any definitional justification beyond the directly-analogous situation of the Allies ending WW2 by dropping two atomic bombs. Granted, we are translating the original Hebrew to English here. One could argue that the English should say "You shall not murder" right from the start, as the provided Hebrew/English translation does, rather than leaving the meaning to require inference, but that is the meaning of the statement. I am not defending the notion that the bible suggests one should not kill, at all, under any circumstances, because it clearly does not say
Yes, for one, people can do "in a similar manner as" inferences that tend to be rather vicious things to represent flexibly enough in data or write a general algorithm for.
You may have seen such things in IQ tests for people, the "X is to Y as A is to B" questions...
"Tree is to forest as book is to _______".
It is not difficult for a human to pick an answer "library" from a multiple-choice list including, say, "cover", "magazine", and "pages". Having a computer score as well on a series of these, though, is to my mind, something as difficult to do as reliably passing the Turing Test, and much of the capability of human intelligence (and a hypothetical true AI system) is provided by the ability to do thought processes like this.
I know of no implementation that has a reasonable hope of meeting this objective that exists, and maybe I was a bit harsh with the GP in expressing that. Being overly generous in accepting claims of a product being AI is easy to do given the complexity of the field, and such claims have a lot financial incentive to be made falsely by companies. I remember a nationwide TV ad campaign 10-15 years ago by, IIRC, Compuware, touting their "software that thinks". The only problem is that it did, and does, no such thing, and the claim serves only to cheapen legitimate accomplishments of the field for deceptive financial gain. Seeing a procession of similar misrepresentations over time (e.g. Siri), it's become something of a "pet annoyance" of mine.
Non-omnipotence implies that they have to obey the basic rules of whatever reality they inhabit, or at least some of them.
Omnipotence generally implies this as well, with respect to the constraints of logical non-contradiction--on the basis of (in brief), if you object that a supposedly omnipotent God cannot, say, make a square circle, you have not in fact identified a limitation on omnipotence, rather, at base you have failed to use language meaningfully.
Whenever I hear anthropomorphizing phrases like "will take everything into account", my overstated-AI BS alarm goes off.
Can you elaborate on by what means or personal experience you assert that Watson does more than statistical analysis of the language it is "given", as essentially-arbitrary symbols, and, say, give some means (or even a data structure) by which it "knows" even what a "patient" is, such that it could draw inferences about such an entity in the absence of an existing chain of words providing the answer via textual comparison of the terms and/or synonymous symbols?
...this clearly only refers to other members of the Judaic tradition, as God later commands genocide...
Or, your inference is entirely erroneous. Outside of stating it is "clearly" meaning what it clearly is not, your other term of characterization is disingenuous as well. "Genocide" is a term implying a great deal that isn't present in your example. Most would consider a counterattack against a culture which had previously been an extreme aggressor to be an act of "war", not "genocide"--as "genocide" is used to imply an "innocent", victimized group. The Amalekites were nothing of the sort.
You may wish to note the particular mitigating ethical factors given by historical Rabbis, none of which are necessary to demonstrate your characterization is without merit.
Being that "mass-murder" is definitely an instance of the category of "murder", and rather than using the verbal construction "genocide" to misrepresent the historical facts, we use the appropriate term of "war", my statement, and its proper qualification, stand.
Interesting theory... though Sagan's rendering seems a bit more conjectural or arbitrary than I'd ideally like. One might, on this anecdotal level, alternately say that "up" would become "bad" due to being the origin of storms and dangerous weather, and "down" would develop neural wiring as "good" because that's where the accessible game animals typically are.
It would be nice to specify the causality here more certainly and precisely, though we may not yet be at a state of knowledge sufficient to enable that...
Interesting point--and a follow-on question to ponder would be the survival advantage of willingly -not- seeing whether the other entity can see you. We see such behavior in dominance challenges, where breaks eye contact with . This is a clear and strong intuitive meaning, but the wider details of why specifically this has come to occur and why it universally corresponds to certain meaning I find rather intriguing.
Similarly, we have the question of mere directions that one is looking as having significant importance...
"Looking up at " and "looking down at " seem to have an almost intrinsic physical validly apart from any socialized association of particular meaning or evaluation. Notions such as "looking up at heaven" or "looking down into the abyss" are universal in having equivalents across religions and mythologies, and what is suggested by "looking up" versus "looking down" broadly understood even apart from context involving these.
Why do we almost viscerally and intuitively feel that "good stuff" is "up", and "bad stuff" is "down", and how did that sense get propagated from the development of our physical biology to a nearly-universal conceptual and linguistic "understanding"?
Religion is, by its very definition, superstition.
A directly-false, that is to say, directly lying, statement. To be "by definition", something has to, you know, be constituent of a concept's definition. You don't succeed in making something true "by definition" merely by using the words "by definition".
Strong belief in something that has zero probability of being true is being delusional.
A directly-false, that is to say, directly lying, statement. Firstly, it is false to say there is "zero probability", and you have literally no basis for this claim. -Even were it true-, this does not meet the criteria of "delusion", as this is a term with particular criteria--that is, maintenance of a belief in the face of -direct factual presentation- otherwise. It could, in fact, be the case that there is a zero probability of the Copenhagen Interpretation of QM being true (a question yet indeterminate, scientifically), and belief in it would -not- be "delusional". Only in the presentation of -direct sensory proof- that it is false, would the view actually be "delusional". We have an alternate, accurate word for the millions of such situations apart from such direct proof, that come up daily, when lack of factual correctness is applicable: "Mistaken".
Scientists can come across as cruel or harsh or demeaning or bigoted when facts are presented, that doesn't mean they are.
Find me a scientist, and have him comment on the thread, then. You are, as demonstrated, simply an ill-informed liar. For a scientist, in the proper sense, his goal is to educate, not to intimidate, which is the -only- added objective of the term "delusion". It adds no informational value whatsoever.
Genetic proclivity towards altruism is documented in science, and from a selfish gene perspective, altruism makes perfect sense.
Addressed already. It hardly matters that this is a plausible evaluation. Although you almost manage to fail to convey even a true statement with a baseline level of coherence, with your direct equation of "altruism" and "selfishness", the reality is that for any given behavioral norm, the exact opposite could be claimed to be a plausible survival strategy as well. There is no sensible way to proceed from that point, other than conjecturing and attempting to validate the relative effectiveness of the two alternatives by the criteria of actual survival effectiveness, a practice which rapidly becomes impossible, and inane in terms of proposing that this methodology of guessing at the effectiveness of DNA propagation objectively resolves any -ethical- question.
Really, you're going to be that dumb?
Given that your post is among the stupidest, most directly dishonest ones I have ever encountered on Slashdot, I can only smile at this. I am going to be "as dumb" as to make the true, backed statement I made, correctly, yes.
Slashdot Mirror
Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.
How about a fully-much direct quote? That's my personal preference for quotes, anyway.
Though it's more a question of editorial integrity than convenience, and I have only marginal interest in what Rep. Paul Broun says, out of curiosity I watched it. Granted, including "all that stuff I was taught about" didn't add much in terms of clarity.
"...on evolution, embryology, and the big bang theory as 'lies straight from the pit of Hell.'"
By the way, it would be nice if the quote was an actual quote. Bear in mind that the Big Bang was initially proposed by a Catholic physicist/priest, and was roundly attacked as "anti-science" for sounding to much like Genesis, in contrast to the then-prevailing Steady State theory of the universe.
It's not clear to me what would be objectionable about embryology per se from any theistic stance, and it's really only scientifically-untestable "-only- evolutionary processes occur" that poses a conflict for some views of theism. When I see a semi-quote like this one, I tend to think there's a bit of bias involved with the citation...
It's a good 130 years too late to answer that question empirically...
So -you- say!
"Patent disputes like [the Apple-Samsung case] are a natural characteristic of a vigorously competitive industry."
And that only companies on a scale like Apple, Samsung, and... IBM can be competitive in any patent-portfolio showdown, is not.
Though, he seems to like using terms that can't actually fail to be the case, given how he uses them. Yes, there is "industry". Yes, it is "competitive"--increasingly within an oligopoly.
The next one is better, though.
"If patent litigation caused by the U.S. patent system stifled innovation, U.S. software companies would not be the most successful in the world."
a) The broad software industry did not reach the point it is at with such patent battles being mainstream, and...
b) If we had a single software company in the U.S., that is "most successful" compared to its equivalent in each other country, is that satisfactory, in reality, as opposed to per how his sentence is phrased?
Unfortunately, per usual, the worst enemy of free-market capitalism, is capitalists, as it's almost always to a large company's net advantage to have a general impediment applied to everyone--which will cost them, but also eliminate the smaller competition via those costs. The cost of lawyers, handily, being among such general impediments.
He could code (and in multiple languages), in contrast to, say, Steve Jobs.
From what I've read of the experiences of other coders/designers/architects, he had the in-depth technical acumen to make a one-on-one development review a very detailed and rather harrowing experience, as well.
How can you argue that it was somehow outside the legal system?
I can argue it because the direct quotes provided by someone well-versed in the situation indicate that was the case. If you want to claim that any act taken by anyone in supposed authority is the result of a "legal system", I'll venture to say, again, most would disagree with you. A dictator is outside of a "process of law", as commonly understood. That's why people, without irony, refer to "rogue states". Simply being in power does not give ones actions the imprimatur of a valid legal process.
I just think your reasoning is lacking on how it substantially differs from other similar sorts of actions that allowed for mass-killings of otherwise innocent people within a legal framework.
We were "there" because picked up the digression-from-a-digression that you apparently liked arguing better, actually. My rationale was clear and straightforward from the outset. We could very reasonably assume that the women and children killed by the Atomic Bombs would inevitably kill, or aid in the killing, of more people in countries toward which Japan was the aggressor, given the political system they lived under. This is directly analogous to the case in the OT, with the added factor we aren't just quite sure they would, but absolutely sure they would, if we accept God ordered based on the foreknowledge that is implicit in the situation we are evaluating. Even without that, further justification is not required, and, again, you can do your own personal survey on whether Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified as a wartime act against an aggressor nation, in the alternative to ongoing fighting and death on both sides, and you can ask if these were acts of "murder". I am very confident of what the outcome of your survey will be.
He didn't perpetrate those acts to further "Atheism".
Such was indeed his claim, as leader of a nation formally atheistic and pursuing a formally-atheistic agenda. It just didn't work out being differentiable in practice from totalitarian power-seeking, either for his theistic or his atheistic victims. Can we, though, cut back a little on your psychic awareness of motivations, and get back to the rationale based on outcomes? Again, there is no problem justifying the deaths of some in an aggressor nation to save many more. That's what's before you, no psychic judgments as to the supposed motivations required.
But they were advocating their actions as being specifically for their religion. I don't see how you can say that Christians are somehow definitively against mass-murder when so much of history is filled with Christians committing it, and specifically doing so in the name of God...
By reference to the content of the belief. Again, your protestations notwithstanding, you have demonstrated no case of mass-murder being advocated by the bible, for the reasons thoroughly given and valid. If you want to assert it again, fine, but it will remain an invalid characterization for the same reasons as before. If any philosophy's document says "Don't do X", and you blatantly do X, you are -not- following the philosophy, whatever your claims may be. You seem to be conflating the worldview's definition with people's success at performing it. This is invalid. If Tibetan monks take a vow of silence, and then starts a talk-radio program, one does not say that the talk-radio programs are core to the belief system--one validly says the it isn't, is contrary to the vow, and the practitioner has failed to practice it correctly--exactly as you would for -every other viewpoint- than your special-case of when talking about religions you don't like.
You still need to justify God's killing of first-borns in Egypt as not-mass-murder.
Not really. I might have a need to do so if you had anything resembling any moral or practical authority stemming from anything you've presented. You don't. God gave us life, God can take that away. N
Sorry, but on this issue, I'll take Nikita Khruschev's recounting of history over yours, as he was probably a little more familiar with the situation than you.
...
After the criminal murder of S. M. Kirov, mass repressions and brutal acts of violation of Socialist legality began. On the evening of December 1, 1934, on Stalin's initiative (without the approval of the Political Bureau - which was passed 2 days later, casually) the Secretary of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee, Yenukidze, signed the following directive:
This directive became the basis for mass acts of abuse against Socialist legality.
An example of vile provocation of odious falsification and of criminal violation of revolutionary legality is the case of the former candidate for the central committee political bureau, one of the most eminent workers of the party and of the Soviet Government, Comrade Eikhe, who was a party member since 1905.
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1956khrushchev-secret1.html
And on, and on.
You can't quite seem to win on any point, can you? You're just making assertions of its ethical status, in the face of you agreeing with a directly-equivalent action in WW2. And, do note, emptily using the term "ethical" neither means you've connected your assertion to any demonstrated system of ethical axioms, nor, well, that you have the slightest idea what you mean when using the term "ethical", other than philosophically parasiting off of -my- metaphysical justification by cultural assimilation of the norms of theism. Yes, I actually do know at least a dozen formalized systems of proposed secular-based ethics, and their respective weaknesses. You completely defaulting on justifying your characterizations -at all-, drawing from the resources of -your worldview-, isn't even getting started on what you need to do here.
Again, still waiting for any objection you care to forward on the basis of evolution, or anything to give your self-contradicting subjective utterances any weight at all. Until then, carry on as the sole party here advocating mass-murder.
I lost my attention span with the "Page Not Found".
Maybe a link check is in order?
"Thou shalt not kill" is properly rendered as "you shall not murder", as it meaning the general case cannot be supported by reference to the rest of the Old Testament. Though some English translations render this as "kill" along with "murder", going to the original Hebrew makes this distinction clearer.
Prohibitions of suicide that some denominations have, are inferential interpretations. As I said, there are no direct prohibitions of suicide, and when it has been recounted to have occurred with figures in the bible, no censure of the act is stated.
This leaves us with evaluating the circumstance according to broader religious principles of caring for people's welfare--and in cases where a person has concluded their Earthly existence is worse than not having it, I cannot see condemning it, as the bible does not.
From my understanding of the situation at that time, I would provisionally agree with the action taken. My agreement with that action doesn't mean it wasn't murder. It absolutely was. Murder on a grand scale. Just that on the balance, it was very likely the best of bad options. I'm ok with the fact that I can ethically say "mass-murder is sometimes justified and can be the correct action." You don't seem to have reached that point.
Let's simplify at this point, for efficiency.
By your own words, you advocate mass-murder, with unspecified qualifications, presumably left up to your feelings at the time.
You are the only entity related to this discussion that is taking the position that mass-murder is acceptable. The situation in the bible was not mass-murder, for the reasons I've given, and even if it were, you do not categorically reject it, by your own words.
Based on the discussion to date, the only advocate of mass-murder involved here--between you, me, religious believers, and God--is you. On that basis, there is nothing further to be gained from the discussion.
If you wish further verification of this...
And do not cite the legal system or warfare. Those are, by definition, not murder. Killing your own citizens to expand your clique's political power, that -is- murder.
Ask ten people around you if these circumstances properly and definitionally alter the question of whether someone being put to death is "murder":
1. The death occurs under the authority of the country's legal system
2. The death occurs in wartime, under authorized orders
Even in the case of your cited Stalinist Russia, it was not pretended that the deaths occurred under a process of law. To be precise, the circumstance was implicitly "I am ordering this. I either need not, or do not, care if it is murder." That doesn't alter the fact that executions specified at the end of a process of law are not murder.
Just to note, though I'm averse in general to the "religion says its wrong, therefore its right" form of rationale...
There are no prohibitions of suicide in Judeo-Christian scriptures.
Stallman's idea is very compatible with a notion of reversing the reversal of the original intent of patents that has happened in the modern corporate business environment.
The main necessity of patents in the past was specifically the differential between the capabilities of the individual or small company, and the large established company, to take a concept from initial concept/implementation to large-scale production. That differential was, in large part, the reason why the market in itself was not trusted to sort out the situation. The inventor was the source of the product, but apart from an enforced "protected time period", established industry could simply take the idea and immediately outproduce the inventor, due to the very nature of mass-production and distribution of physical goods, thus "winning" via the basic nature of that market.
Arguably, in software this core rationale for patents no longer applies. Reproducing the invention (e.g. copying the files) costs essentially nothing, and so no entity has a pre-existing "unfair advantage" in transitioning a new product from the point of initial creation to the point of mass-production.
In the absence of this differential, we have the spectacle of modern patents, where it is no longer used to help the "small company" (or individual) against the "big companies" in addressing this production-capacity differential, but instead are used by large corporations against other large corporations, neither of which has any differential in intrinsic capacity needing to be addressed. The net result is preventing public-benefitting "inventions" from being used by anyone except their corporation, when it doesn't have the effect of stopping any benefit from the innovations at all--due to the risk of creating anything with armies of patent-troll lawyers laying in wait.
So... yeah. Agreed. Software -is- different. And it is different in precisely the core attribute that justified patents in the first place.
An 'external monitor' for an IV pump? Exactly how would you do that?
PC, GUI, RS232 board, is one way I can personally verify it has been done. See my previous post for the caveats, though.
Some lessons were learned, if only the priority to isolate to somebody else the selling company's risks. Around 20 years ago my first "real" software job was writing software to interface PC GUI-based monitoring/nursing-operation software to another Very Large Very Well Known Company's infusion pumps. Along with all the software implementation expectations they had of the 8-person company I worked for, a major priority of theirs was ensuring we developed a "Failure Mode Effects Analysis" document. Essentially, that involved our company non-optionally documenting (and thereby taking the risk for), every conceivable way the overall system could break (inclusive of their pumps breaking), and detailing specifics on how it wouldn't break (in a manner that could conceivably put a patient at risk) even if it broke, for all those hypothetical circumstances. My introduction to the world of theoretically-impossible engineering tasks, and the politics of making sure those tasks are the responsibility of Other People, started early...
Then present some evidence of that. Solving analogies is much, much harder than guessing at a probable appropriate word to pick (prefixed with "Who/what is a...") after running the question string into Google and doing a statistical analysis of the words in the Top 1000 search results.
A few points on your post here.
Firstly, understand that the concept "genocide" came into existence in 1943, and for all the previous millennia of both Eastern and Western philosophy, both religious and secular, it didn't arise that this term was perceived as meaningful in a way that was necessary, or even useful, for ethical questions from any of these perspectives. Indeed, if you're going to kill a lot of people, them all being of the same ethnicity doesn't seem to be a morally central factor in evaluating it. However, as we both know, you don't think it is either--if nothing else, I assume you'd have to agree that if a culture had 1000 members, killing all of them would not be made worse for that reason alone than killing 10000 people from different cultures. I again submit that the -sole- reason you are using the term, is to -imply-, disingenuously, an "innocent victim" status to the people being discussed, not because it's validly part of "genocide", but because you know that's what people will assume when hearing the term.
Before I proceed, let me ask, do you agree with, or disagree with, the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? These actions certainly also killed large numbers of "innocent" women and children. It was done on the basis of winning the war, and that, quite simply, these women and children would in the future continue to be either supporters of, or active participants in, the continued killing of the members of other countries, which they were the initial aggressors. Since on that basis, that is was -extremely probable- that this would be the future of those people, by virtue of the nature of their culture (e.g. the totalitarian political system of Japan at the time), are you prepared to say that this bombardment was not legitimately an act of self-defense? When we have your answer to that, then we can look at it in the religious context you're somewhat-accepting, somewhat-rejecting based on whatever best furthers rejecting the religion in totality. In that context, given the assumptions we must make to discuss decisions within it, it was not merely highly probable that the people killed would continue to kill or aid in the killing of the countries they initiated attacks on, but -certain- they would, as a consequence of God's omniscience. If you're going to argue some of it should be taken as factual for the purpose of evaluating the ethical situation, you need to evaluate that situation in the context of -all- of it, as it is presented to be. This is inclusive of the foreknowledge that says, we can move beyond valid the human opinion that it most probably will save more lives that it will cost, in the case of WW2 Japan, to this context where we -know- it will save those lives. That's the context under discussion--certainty of saving more than will be lost, though mere strong probability is sufficient to justify both actions within the Christian ethical system, and other ethical systems as well, such as Consequentialism and Utilitarianism.
You're a bit all all over the map here in terms of what you are arguing against. My statement was that "you shall not (mass) murder" is a defining norm of the belief system, and that statement remains correct, even if you are indecisive as to whether you want to claim the bible is contradictory on this point, or definitely says the opposite of what it says. It is a defining norm, and the actions against the Amakelites was neither mass-murder, nor murder, with any definitional justification beyond the directly-analogous situation of the Allies ending WW2 by dropping two atomic bombs. Granted, we are translating the original Hebrew to English here. One could argue that the English should say "You shall not murder" right from the start, as the provided Hebrew/English translation does, rather than leaving the meaning to require inference, but that is the meaning of the statement. I am not defending the notion that the bible suggests one should not kill, at all, under any circumstances, because it clearly does not say
Yes, for one, people can do "in a similar manner as" inferences that tend to be rather vicious things to represent flexibly enough in data or write a general algorithm for.
You may have seen such things in IQ tests for people, the "X is to Y as A is to B" questions...
"Tree is to forest as book is to _______".
It is not difficult for a human to pick an answer "library" from a multiple-choice list including, say, "cover", "magazine", and "pages". Having a computer score as well on a series of these, though, is to my mind, something as difficult to do as reliably passing the Turing Test, and much of the capability of human intelligence (and a hypothetical true AI system) is provided by the ability to do thought processes like this.
I know of no implementation that has a reasonable hope of meeting this objective that exists, and maybe I was a bit harsh with the GP in expressing that. Being overly generous in accepting claims of a product being AI is easy to do given the complexity of the field, and such claims have a lot financial incentive to be made falsely by companies. I remember a nationwide TV ad campaign 10-15 years ago by, IIRC, Compuware, touting their "software that thinks". The only problem is that it did, and does, no such thing, and the claim serves only to cheapen legitimate accomplishments of the field for deceptive financial gain. Seeing a procession of similar misrepresentations over time (e.g. Siri), it's become something of a "pet annoyance" of mine.
Non-omnipotence implies that they have to obey the basic rules of whatever reality they inhabit, or at least some of them.
Omnipotence generally implies this as well, with respect to the constraints of logical non-contradiction--on the basis of (in brief), if you object that a supposedly omnipotent God cannot, say, make a square circle, you have not in fact identified a limitation on omnipotence, rather, at base you have failed to use language meaningfully.
*citation needed
Whenever I hear anthropomorphizing phrases like "will take everything into account", my overstated-AI BS alarm goes off.
Can you elaborate on by what means or personal experience you assert that Watson does more than statistical analysis of the language it is "given", as essentially-arbitrary symbols, and, say, give some means (or even a data structure) by which it "knows" even what a "patient" is, such that it could draw inferences about such an entity in the absence of an existing chain of words providing the answer via textual comparison of the terms and/or synonymous symbols?
No, it is not.
...this clearly only refers to other members of the Judaic tradition, as God later commands genocide...
Yes, it is.
The Commandment is probably closer to "Thou Shalt Not Murder Fellow Jews"...
Anything else you'd like to entirely make up on the spot, while you're at it?
Here's a slew of English translations, all rendering it as "kill" or "murder":
http://bible.cc/exodus/20-13.htm
Here it is in the original Hebrew, with no qualification of "fellow Jews" or anything else for that matter:
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt0220.htm
Or, your inference is entirely erroneous. Outside of stating it is "clearly" meaning what it clearly is not, your other term of characterization is disingenuous as well. "Genocide" is a term implying a great deal that isn't present in your example. Most would consider a counterattack against a culture which had previously been an extreme aggressor to be an act of "war", not "genocide"--as "genocide" is used to imply an "innocent", victimized group. The Amalekites were nothing of the sort.
More information here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amalek
You may wish to note the particular mitigating ethical factors given by historical Rabbis, none of which are necessary to demonstrate your characterization is without merit.
Being that "mass-murder" is definitely an instance of the category of "murder", and rather than using the verbal construction "genocide" to misrepresent the historical facts, we use the appropriate term of "war", my statement, and its proper qualification, stand.
Interesting theory... though Sagan's rendering seems a bit more conjectural or arbitrary than I'd ideally like. One might, on this anecdotal level, alternately say that "up" would become "bad" due to being the origin of storms and dangerous weather, and "down" would develop neural wiring as "good" because that's where the accessible game animals typically are.
It would be nice to specify the causality here more certainly and precisely, though we may not yet be at a state of knowledge sufficient to enable that...
So, Slashdot apparently excised the parts of my post that looked too much like HTML tags...
"...where /entity1/ breaks eye contact with /entity2/..."
"Looking up at /someone or something good/" and "looking down at /someone or something bad/..." ...was what I was going for.
Nevermind. (Looks down, mysteriously in preference to up, dejectedly)
Interesting point--and a follow-on question to ponder would be the survival advantage of willingly -not- seeing whether the other entity can see you. We see such behavior in dominance challenges, where breaks eye contact with . This is a clear and strong intuitive meaning, but the wider details of why specifically this has come to occur and why it universally corresponds to certain meaning I find rather intriguing.
Similarly, we have the question of mere directions that one is looking as having significant importance...
"Looking up at " and "looking down at " seem to have an almost intrinsic physical validly apart from any socialized association of particular meaning or evaluation. Notions such as "looking up at heaven" or "looking down into the abyss" are universal in having equivalents across religions and mythologies, and what is suggested by "looking up" versus "looking down" broadly understood even apart from context involving these.
Why do we almost viscerally and intuitively feel that "good stuff" is "up", and "bad stuff" is "down", and how did that sense get propagated from the development of our physical biology to a nearly-universal conceptual and linguistic "understanding"?
Religion is, by its very definition, superstition.
A directly-false, that is to say, directly lying, statement. To be "by definition", something has to, you know, be constituent of a concept's definition. You don't succeed in making something true "by definition" merely by using the words "by definition".
Strong belief in something that has zero probability of being true is being delusional.
A directly-false, that is to say, directly lying, statement. Firstly, it is false to say there is "zero probability", and you have literally no basis for this claim. -Even were it true-, this does not meet the criteria of "delusion", as this is a term with particular criteria--that is, maintenance of a belief in the face of -direct factual presentation- otherwise. It could, in fact, be the case that there is a zero probability of the Copenhagen Interpretation of QM being true (a question yet indeterminate, scientifically), and belief in it would -not- be "delusional". Only in the presentation of -direct sensory proof- that it is false, would the view actually be "delusional". We have an alternate, accurate word for the millions of such situations apart from such direct proof, that come up daily, when lack of factual correctness is applicable: "Mistaken".
Scientists can come across as cruel or harsh or demeaning or bigoted when facts are presented, that doesn't mean they are.
Find me a scientist, and have him comment on the thread, then. You are, as demonstrated, simply an ill-informed liar. For a scientist, in the proper sense, his goal is to educate, not to intimidate, which is the -only- added objective of the term "delusion". It adds no informational value whatsoever.
Genetic proclivity towards altruism is documented in science, and from a selfish gene perspective, altruism makes perfect sense.
Addressed already. It hardly matters that this is a plausible evaluation. Although you almost manage to fail to convey even a true statement with a baseline level of coherence, with your direct equation of "altruism" and "selfishness", the reality is that for any given behavioral norm, the exact opposite could be claimed to be a plausible survival strategy as well. There is no sensible way to proceed from that point, other than conjecturing and attempting to validate the relative effectiveness of the two alternatives by the criteria of actual survival effectiveness, a practice which rapidly becomes impossible, and inane in terms of proposing that this methodology of guessing at the effectiveness of DNA propagation objectively resolves any -ethical- question.
Really, you're going to be that dumb?
Given that your post is among the stupidest, most directly dishonest ones I have ever encountered on Slashdot, I can only smile at this. I am going to be "as dumb" as to make the true, backed statement I made, correctly, yes.