You would feel bad if you hurt people. People who don't believe in objective values don't all run around murdering for shits and giggles.
Alternatively if you don't care about hurting people, there's always fear of retribution, although that doesn't always work so well.
This is difficult stuff to puzzle over. Pretending that you have a Correct Answer doesn't really help anyone, it just makes you less likely to learn from your mistakes.
I'm implying that there is no objective reason anything matters. What matters to me is personally defined, by me. I'm not hunting for any external justification for valuing intelligent life. Yes, this is arbitrary and capricious, but it's all we have. The universe doesn't contain a "X matters" parameter.
It may just die. Conception doesn't guarantee a live birth.
At what point does it cease to be a "lump of cells?" Where is the line?
There isn't a line. Sorry, no easy way out of this one.
Why am I not just a "lump of cells" now that just happens to think and feel - are those not just byproducts of my biology in that case?
You are a lump of cells that feels and thinks, if you really want to strip out the extras. It's the feeling and thinking part that matters. Not the lump of cells.
What makes you a person, and separates you from all the other critters on God's green earth, is in your head. You can think. You are self-aware. You are sentient. A cockroach is not. A fern is not. An embryo is not. It may develop into a person but it is not yet one. The most cogent argument I've ever found against this is that it has a soul, which puts it nicely into the land of "your religion", which you can kindly keep to yourself.
Possibly because they think there might be some potential to embryonic stem-cell research. If they knew what was going to happen, it wouldn't be research at all. As for the morally questionable element, well, keep in mind that the "large sector of society" is also mostly ignorant of the details, so it's probably best not to let them handicap science too much. There are ethics boards for this sort of thing and I haven't noticed them smacking stem cell research down. That seems to be the exclusive domain of the religious right.
The relevant question is whether we need to do research on the embryonic stem cells first in order to have the luxury of only using adult stem cells. (And whether the extremist pro-lifers would forgo such treatments if the answer turns out to be "yes".)
Well then, I guess the people in Amalek, Samaria and Jabesh-Gilead must have taken great comfort in knowing that they were only part of a finite list of butchered victims.
They're the kind of kings who think that you can be bribed with your own money. Tax cuts only "give" you something when they have a surplus to start with. Right now all your "tax cuts" are financed by borrowing from China and printing money.
Keep in mind that having more choices doesn't mean that a) you have better choices or b) other people don't now have the option to screw you over for their own benefit.
Clearly, since rabbits breed at a much earlier age than humans, they don't evolve at all?
Please. Evolution occurs when you have an imperfectly reproducing population with finite resources. Modern social customs have an effect on evolution, to be sure, but they absolutely do not stop it completely. Any attribute which increases the expected number of successful offspring will be selected for, just as it has been for the past few billion years with every single species on the planet. It's one thing to assert that a couple factors may slow it down, but "stopping" evolution by breeding earlier is right up there with "stopping" gravity by building a floor. It all becomes part of the system.
Spammers aren't idiots. They're making money by sending millions of e-mails to people who just might buy something. Most don't, but the cost is almost zero so it doesn't matter. Unethical, maybe, but not stupid.
Diablo wasn't significantly different in multiplayer. D2 was even less different. In D3 you will presumably have the option of playing by yourself. Hell, you can even do that in "multiplayer" mode if you join a game by yourself and don't let others in.
Alternatively, you could check out multiplayer and see if you like it any better in D3. *shrug*
It isn't so much desperation, but rather the annoyance that the longer this game goes on, the more you are pigeon-holed into your first character choice.
Lets say you want to try a new character now, you better hope that you have the support of your guildmates/friends because it will take a good player 5-6 days to level that character to 70. And that is if you do nothing but grind the character up. So you don't build any of the relationships that you normally would when leveling a character normally and at a reasonable pace. You are banking on using that character with your already established guild relations.
I can't imagine what it will be like when the level cap is raised to 80. The old content is barren enough as it is, now we will have a fairly empty outlands as well. That is unfortunate because a good many of the later quests are group quests which even now are hard as hell to gather a group for. So the game will soon be a 70 level pure grindfest for anyone interested in trying something new or joining the game. Then, add on the rep/gear grinds once you catch up to your friends again.
To paraphrase Chris Rock, I'm not saying I agree with people who use MMOGlider, but I understand.
60-70 will probably get easier after WotLK comes out. Remember that the 1-60 grind is a lot easier now - you get more experience, you need less to level, and most of the old group quests have been toned down so you can solo them. The same is likely in store for 60-70 as well.
Also, Glider gets you something for nothing. You're supposed to play the game yourself, and if you invest some effort you are rewarded for it. Breaking the effort-reward link will annoy a lot of the people who did invest into it - hell, this happens already when Blizzard makes things easier.
So it's hard not to be annoyed when you level your character to 70, slaughter monsters and players alike for hours on end, and then you walk into a battleground and get stomped on by a guy who botted his way to 70 and kickass gear. You get the sucker's payoff, and if that annoys you enough to quit, Blizzard lost your business thanks to the guy with the bot.
I think the critical issue here is that WoW is an MMO. When you cheat the system you're not just affecting yourself, you're affecting the integrity of the game. If Blizzard doesn't work hard to keep the botters from ruining the game, then it will crash and burn, and they shouldn't be forced to do so just because someone feels like making a quick buck off of it.
I don't see why many people wouldn't believe that. The alternative sounds a tad ridiculous on paper - a clump of 100 cells is not going to be equal to an adult human, or an adult mosquito for that matter. There's more to (significant) life than having human DNA, unless you want to consider a vial of your own blood to be a separate person. The only 'problem' with stem cell research is that people are only too happy to outsource their thinking to a guy with a special hat.
Why, in America, of course, where gas is still cheap by international standards! (comparison from May - http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/01/news/international/usgas_price/?postversion=2008050109 )
Of course it used to be much cheaper, which is why people ignored its cost when deciding to take a job with a 2-hour commute they're happy to drive in their SUV. Now it's not free and they're complaining.
Remember that part where he talks about how nobody likes it when he's being nice to a game? The whole point of the ZP is to make fun of the bad stuff. If you use it for a serious evaluation of the game you're insane. 91 on Metacritic ( http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/crysis?q=crysis ) implies it was a pretty good game. If you didn't like it personally then you're welcome to say so, preferably with an explanation, but a pointless link to someone else's intentionally skewed review does not make for useful discussion.
One of the reasons the "most important election of our time" issue comes up is the Supreme Court. Since W got to appoint two justices, the composition is currently something along the lines of "four conservatives, four liberals, Kennedy as the swing vote". Not a perfect characterization, but one of the side effects of this is that given the age gap between the liberals (88, 75, 70, 69) and the conservatives (72, 60, 58, 53) (Kennedy 72), McCain has the opportunity to cement a conservative court for a decade or more by appointing a Scalia clone if one of the liberals leaves. The Senate has a much better chance of holding him up this time around, but it could still get pretty ugly.
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If you can't answer any of those questions without getting spoonfed by a guy in a funny hat, there's not much point in discussing it with me.
Alternatively if you don't care about hurting people, there's always fear of retribution, although that doesn't always work so well.
This is difficult stuff to puzzle over. Pretending that you have a Correct Answer doesn't really help anyone, it just makes you less likely to learn from your mistakes.
I'm implying that there is no objective reason anything matters. What matters to me is personally defined, by me. I'm not hunting for any external justification for valuing intelligent life. Yes, this is arbitrary and capricious, but it's all we have. The universe doesn't contain a "X matters" parameter.
So if we killed off all the developers we would have fantastic games?
Are you implying that having strands of molecules 99+% similar to yours is what matters?
At what point does it cease to be a "lump of cells?" Where is the line?
There isn't a line. Sorry, no easy way out of this one.
Why am I not just a "lump of cells" now that just happens to think and feel - are those not just byproducts of my biology in that case?
You are a lump of cells that feels and thinks, if you really want to strip out the extras. It's the feeling and thinking part that matters. Not the lump of cells.
What makes you a person, and separates you from all the other critters on God's green earth, is in your head. You can think. You are self-aware. You are sentient. A cockroach is not. A fern is not. An embryo is not. It may develop into a person but it is not yet one. The most cogent argument I've ever found against this is that it has a soul, which puts it nicely into the land of "your religion", which you can kindly keep to yourself.
People, great. Lumps of organic matter that in no way resemble an actual human being, no.
Possibly because they think there might be some potential to embryonic stem-cell research. If they knew what was going to happen, it wouldn't be research at all. As for the morally questionable element, well, keep in mind that the "large sector of society" is also mostly ignorant of the details, so it's probably best not to let them handicap science too much. There are ethics boards for this sort of thing and I haven't noticed them smacking stem cell research down. That seems to be the exclusive domain of the religious right.
The relevant question is whether we need to do research on the embryonic stem cells first in order to have the luxury of only using adult stem cells. (And whether the extremist pro-lifers would forgo such treatments if the answer turns out to be "yes".)
If you're Stephen Harper, then every bill IS a confidence vote, because who's going to force an election over it?
Well then, I guess the people in Amalek, Samaria and Jabesh-Gilead must have taken great comfort in knowing that they were only part of a finite list of butchered victims.
Elitists know how fast you should drive...
Elitists know how fast you can drive before you start posing a serious threat to other people. I suppose next you'll be complaining about DUI laws.
They're the kind of kings who think that you can be bribed with your own money. Tax cuts only "give" you something when they have a surplus to start with. Right now all your "tax cuts" are financed by borrowing from China and printing money. Keep in mind that having more choices doesn't mean that a) you have better choices or b) other people don't now have the option to screw you over for their own benefit.
Nevermind the students. Nevermind achievement. Nevermind productivity. The education system, in your description, exists to make teachers happy.
Some of the rest of us would like it to do something for the students too.
How effective do you really think miserable teachers are going to be at teaching?
Clearly, since rabbits breed at a much earlier age than humans, they don't evolve at all? Please. Evolution occurs when you have an imperfectly reproducing population with finite resources. Modern social customs have an effect on evolution, to be sure, but they absolutely do not stop it completely. Any attribute which increases the expected number of successful offspring will be selected for, just as it has been for the past few billion years with every single species on the planet. It's one thing to assert that a couple factors may slow it down, but "stopping" evolution by breeding earlier is right up there with "stopping" gravity by building a floor. It all becomes part of the system.
Spammers aren't idiots. They're making money by sending millions of e-mails to people who just might buy something. Most don't, but the cost is almost zero so it doesn't matter. Unethical, maybe, but not stupid.
Diablo wasn't significantly different in multiplayer. D2 was even less different. In D3 you will presumably have the option of playing by yourself. Hell, you can even do that in "multiplayer" mode if you join a game by yourself and don't let others in. Alternatively, you could check out multiplayer and see if you like it any better in D3. *shrug*
Old news. The spread of HIV has already been well documented by Dr. Tom Lehrer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKZR3Bcj4jw
It isn't so much desperation, but rather the annoyance that the longer this game goes on, the more you are pigeon-holed into your first character choice.
Lets say you want to try a new character now, you better hope that you have the support of your guildmates/friends because it will take a good player 5-6 days to level that character to 70. And that is if you do nothing but grind the character up. So you don't build any of the relationships that you normally would when leveling a character normally and at a reasonable pace. You are banking on using that character with your already established guild relations.
I can't imagine what it will be like when the level cap is raised to 80. The old content is barren enough as it is, now we will have a fairly empty outlands as well. That is unfortunate because a good many of the later quests are group quests which even now are hard as hell to gather a group for. So the game will soon be a 70 level pure grindfest for anyone interested in trying something new or joining the game. Then, add on the rep/gear grinds once you catch up to your friends again.
To paraphrase Chris Rock, I'm not saying I agree with people who use MMOGlider, but I understand.
60-70 will probably get easier after WotLK comes out. Remember that the 1-60 grind is a lot easier now - you get more experience, you need less to level, and most of the old group quests have been toned down so you can solo them. The same is likely in store for 60-70 as well.
Also, Glider gets you something for nothing. You're supposed to play the game yourself, and if you invest some effort you are rewarded for it. Breaking the effort-reward link will annoy a lot of the people who did invest into it - hell, this happens already when Blizzard makes things easier.
So it's hard not to be annoyed when you level your character to 70, slaughter monsters and players alike for hours on end, and then you walk into a battleground and get stomped on by a guy who botted his way to 70 and kickass gear. You get the sucker's payoff, and if that annoys you enough to quit, Blizzard lost your business thanks to the guy with the bot.
I think the critical issue here is that WoW is an MMO. When you cheat the system you're not just affecting yourself, you're affecting the integrity of the game. If Blizzard doesn't work hard to keep the botters from ruining the game, then it will crash and burn, and they shouldn't be forced to do so just because someone feels like making a quick buck off of it.
No Stairway.
I don't see why many people wouldn't believe that. The alternative sounds a tad ridiculous on paper - a clump of 100 cells is not going to be equal to an adult human, or an adult mosquito for that matter. There's more to (significant) life than having human DNA, unless you want to consider a vial of your own blood to be a separate person. The only 'problem' with stem cell research is that people are only too happy to outsource their thinking to a guy with a special hat.
Why, in America, of course, where gas is still cheap by international standards! (comparison from May - http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/01/news/international/usgas_price/?postversion=2008050109 ) Of course it used to be much cheaper, which is why people ignored its cost when deciding to take a job with a 2-hour commute they're happy to drive in their SUV. Now it's not free and they're complaining.
Remember that part where he talks about how nobody likes it when he's being nice to a game? The whole point of the ZP is to make fun of the bad stuff. If you use it for a serious evaluation of the game you're insane. 91 on Metacritic ( http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/crysis?q=crysis ) implies it was a pretty good game. If you didn't like it personally then you're welcome to say so, preferably with an explanation, but a pointless link to someone else's intentionally skewed review does not make for useful discussion.
One of the reasons the "most important election of our time" issue comes up is the Supreme Court. Since W got to appoint two justices, the composition is currently something along the lines of "four conservatives, four liberals, Kennedy as the swing vote". Not a perfect characterization, but one of the side effects of this is that given the age gap between the liberals (88, 75, 70, 69) and the conservatives (72, 60, 58, 53) (Kennedy 72), McCain has the opportunity to cement a conservative court for a decade or more by appointing a Scalia clone if one of the liberals leaves. The Senate has a much better chance of holding him up this time around, but it could still get pretty ugly.