The right and wrongness of murder and thievery cannot be taken as objectively given. The entire history of civilization is littered with "justified" acts of that nature. I'm not even sure what objective moral system you are referring to, there are many formulations, but almost no agreement on which one is "right."
I don't see why an offender can't argue rationally against their punishment. Do you argue that the only way you can rationally argue anything is total emotional and situational remove. So the only way you can rationally discuss something is if you don't care? Just how pointy are your ears anyways?
Some copyright holders would argue that they are victims of copyright violations. If Lawrence Lessig released some work under Creative Commons and it was reused in a way that violates the license, I believe that he would be pretty angry. If Richard Stallman found out you had violated the GPL he might burn your house down.
Wal-Mart's old "Made In America" campaign was a bit of a joke. Many of their American products were produced in the Mariana Islands, which while technically American, were free from America's labor laws.
Everyone is missing the point. The real concern is that a group of WoW'ers will form a lesbian guild. In a few months when they discover that every member is actually a man playing with a female avatar, they will become enraged and destroy Blizzard HQ for making them face their deep-seated fear of being gay.
Umm.. wait, the guy from PC-Mag explains why there is an Apple bias in his piece.
"In fact it will only get worse as technology coverage is handed to newer, less-qualified observers who simply cannot use a Microsoft Windows computer."
If you are designing software for everyone, and they choose not to use it because they are unable to use it, then you have failed. I know that is not the intent of his comment, but he is basically admitting that MS is failing to reach an influential population. It's not like they are reviewing web servers, or RDBMS's which are not supposed to be used by everyone.
I wasn't committing the straw man fallacy. I was pointing out that the ID tries to dress itself up like the Hume/Locke'ian cop-out of saying "Nothing else works, so there must be a god" in a humorous way.
Maybe I am confused on what exactly ID consists of. If you think that ID is simply an argument in support of a creator, then it belongs in philosophical conversations, but that is not what ID says. ID is a religious critique of a scientific theory. It tries to dress itself up as something else, but that is what it is. Where religion provides certainty through faith, science achieves results through skepticism.
That is why ID does not belong in anything besides a marketing course. It is one thing pretending to be another. Someone else in this thread refers to it as sophistry, an apt description if ever there were one.
Intelligent design is not so much a theory as a poorly formed complaint about evolution. It does fun things like say, "I'm a scientific theory" when according to the standard definition of scientific theories, it is not. As a practical matter, it has almost as many supporters in the evolutionary biology community as Lamarckism.
What's interesting about citing Locke is that his empiricism inspired Hume not only to (as I like to put it) kill certainty, but also to help more firmly lay the groundwork of what we call the scientific method. A method which provides many of the explanations he could not fathom when he was writing.
If you are arguing that Intelligent Design comes from the standpoint of 17th Century science, then I strongly encourage you to use that as a selling point to everyone you come across.
Umm.. Plato and Aristotle were theists, Kant was a hardcore Christian, Locke was Christian, Hume was probably a deist (I mean, he concluded that there was probably a god because we had no alternative explanation at the time). Heidegger was a Nazi. Just because I listed them doesn't mean that they were atheists. There is plenty of interesting epistemological ground to be covered that overlaps with religious theories. Intelligent Design is not one of them.
Note: Heidegger being a Nazi (while true) has no real bearing on the original comment. Don't overreact.
My main objection to addressing Intelligent Design in a philosophy class is that it would be a waste of time. Why not discuss Hume, Locke, Kant, Heidegger, Plato, Aristotle. If you like recent philosophers then discuss Hare, Quine, Foucault, or Foote.
There is little of philosophical value in Intelligent Design. It may be of theological interest, and while the line between philosophy and theology can be indistinct.. Intelligent design is a manufactured theory that is far past the dividing line.
Actually, I think we've hit on the right class to teach Intelligent Design. A marketing class. Look kids, how do you find a way to rebrand an old idea to provide it with added legitimacy in the modern age?
I always thought the "balance to the Force" prophecy was suspect. In a world where 99% of the Jedis are light side, and there are 2 dark side Jedis.. bringing balance to the force would require killing a whole lot of light side Jedis. If Mace Windu was smart, he would have cut off Anakin's head the minute they saw him.
I fully agree that you should not buy products from companies whose practices you find abhorrent.
That doesn't mean the government should legislate to support your beliefs over someone elses. Just because some hardcore Republican refuses to buy Heinz ketchup doesn't mean the government should legislate against Heinz ketchup.
Companies are profit whores. When people vote with their checkbooks, companies change practices. GE is undergoing a major shift to reflect environmental interests. Surprisingly, as the government becomes worse on these issues, some (not many) corporations are becoming better because they want to kiss up to people who care about the issues.
The market is about giving power to the consumer. We just have to use it.
It all depends on the party. I remember hearing of a party 2,000 years ago. 13 guys attended, it was a bit of a sausage hang save for this whore who showed up for a little bit. Some say she had something going on with the guest of honor, but there are no records to confirm it.
The party was a total downer because one of the guys got pissed, ratted them out to the cops, and the guest of honor was nailed to two pieces of wood. I heard his Dad had to pick him up a few days later.
It should be mentioned that California has some pretty powerful movie interests. It's no surprise. She can't afford to alienate that contributor base.
On the other hand, Dems have an equally myopic view of copyright law as Repubs.
While I haven't RTFA, it should be noted that this is for pre-release works. There is no analogy to me loaning a CD to a friend on this one. This could clearly be thought of as someone stealing from their employer and then other people expanding the criminal action. I doubt this is as bad as many alarmists make it out to be.
I think the point of his comment was that if you took a modern baseball player and put them in the past they would dominate. By no means does that make them innately better than the old players. Presumably if you took a young Babe Ruth and put him through the training process (with all the medical and nutritional advantages) that current players go through, he would be competitive (if not dominate) now.
I'm seriously skeptical of this claim. It's not that I wouldn't put it past the RIAA & crew to feel that way, but stores like Wal-Mart and Sam Goody (or some other large music store) probably sell more music that iTunes does. They are probably more concerned that the acceptance of digital music will eliminate the most important leg of the traditional music tri-pod (distribution, marketing, and production -- aka driving the musician deeply into debt). When the distribution leg is removed, these companies will be forced to shrink substantially, and possibly innovate. Both of which are bad for lazy conglomerates already at the top of the heap.
By allowing iTunes & company to sell music online, they can now claim to have tried to take advantage of digital distribution. It allows the illusion of competition, but now that it's becoming a bigger threat, they need to shut it down.
It seems like you are arguing more with how the media presents these things (ie. simplistically and sensationistically) than how scientists actually view them.
Even if it is not completely certain that humans are causing a phenomena which will destroy modern civilization (reactionary phraseology intentional).. can we agree that a) we've caused massive changes to the chemical composition of our atmosphere, and b) we should try to avoid destructive scenarios wherever possible.
It's not like anyone reasonable is advocating that we kill off 80% of the planet's population and then live off the land wearing hair suits. Advocating conservation and moving away from non-renewable resources that cause health problems (eg. asthma) and tie our fates to a volatile (to say the least) section of the world... is prudent irregardless of the global warming issue.. which is well accepted by the (vast) majority of the scientific community.
Could they all be wrong? You bet, scientific theories can all be proven false. That doesn't mean you shouldn't address problems recognized by the most reasoned thinking of the time.
Once the cutting-edge materials of engineering were steel girders, then transistors. And next, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is gambling....
When I first read this sentence I thought they had started a gambling major due to the success of MIT Gamblers.
Saying that we should wait until there is a major disaster from global warming is like driving at night, knowing there is a cliff ahead of you somewhere, and saying, "We shouldn't turn or stop until we hit something."
Also, given demographic changes, and the continuing de-agriculturalization of the American economy, more people live in and around cities (the notable exception being ex-urbs). To say that a large and growing percentage of the population is not directly and immediately affected by air pollution is incorrect, and all of us are being indirectly affected through climate change.
The blog article you link to is even crazier than the things that you hear from hardcore enviros on these issues. It's viewpoint on how conservation will be achieved uses the same logic that intelligent designers use to refute evolution. "How could evolution explain a bug that looks like a stick when the intermediary steps would be useless when trying to hide from a hawk." (The simplified answer is that 5% camoflauge is effective against the hawk who at the time had 5% of his current ability to recognize small objects)
The oil crisis in the late 70's caused us to develop technological changes that held oil consumption in the US to levels below that of the late 70's until the mid 90's. It's not like we are going to say, "Let's cut our energy consumption by 60% right now." It will be a gradual process and markets.. being what they are.. will tap more and different renewable (and non-renewable) resources and bring about increased efficiency and conservation.
Additionally, saying that the changes will be as harsh now as they were in the 70's is demonstrably false. OPEC already provided some evidence of that. Our recent increased oil costs have not crippled our economy. We are much less oil dependent then we were in the past, and we should be working as hard as humanly possible to become less dependent on oil (and coal, gas, and in the long term nuclear (fission)). A little inconvenience now will pay off huge dividends in the future.. not only because of environmental improvements, but also because American companies would be the go to orgs for enviro technologies as the rest of the developing and developed world looks for ways to raise their living standards.
I think you are looking at this question improperly. It's a question of whether the investment will cause economic development in high enough quantity to cover the cost.. as compared to other uses of tax dollars.
As an imperfect analogy, just because everyone cannot afford a car, does that make government investment in roads bad? It's just a question of opportunity cost. I prefer to think of this sort of service as a good infrastructure investment -- which is good to do with public dollars.
While I completely agree with your comment.. we never realistically posed a military threat to N. Korea. Kim could mortar Seoul off the face of the planet before we could ever launch a crippling strike on N. Korea. And given all the new Worlds of Warcraft players in S. Korea, that might cripple our economy.
Slashdot Mirror
The right and wrongness of murder and thievery cannot be taken as objectively given. The entire history of civilization is littered with "justified" acts of that nature. I'm not even sure what objective moral system you are referring to, there are many formulations, but almost no agreement on which one is "right."
I don't see why an offender can't argue rationally against their punishment. Do you argue that the only way you can rationally argue anything is total emotional and situational remove. So the only way you can rationally discuss something is if you don't care? Just how pointy are your ears anyways?
Some copyright holders would argue that they are victims of copyright violations. If Lawrence Lessig released some work under Creative Commons and it was reused in a way that violates the license, I believe that he would be pretty angry. If Richard Stallman found out you had violated the GPL he might burn your house down.
I think Gob from Arrested Development handles some of their copy:
"Look Banner Michael!"
Wal-Mart's old "Made In America" campaign was a bit of a joke. Many of their American products were produced in the Mariana Islands, which while technically American, were free from America's labor laws.
There is a CNN story about current abuses, but Wal-Mart was doing this back in the mid-80's.
I can access Pine from my phone. And my PSP. And my Palm. And my old Amiga. And my Mac. My old 64k OS9/6809 system.
If a method of communication's utility were determined by the lowest level of technology it can be used with, I'd be praising smoke signals.
Everyone is missing the point. The real concern is that a group of WoW'ers will form a lesbian guild. In a few months when they discover that every member is actually a man playing with a female avatar, they will become enraged and destroy Blizzard HQ for making them face their deep-seated fear of being gay.
"In fact it will only get worse as technology coverage is handed to newer, less-qualified observers who simply cannot use a Microsoft Windows computer."
If you are designing software for everyone, and they choose not to use it because they are unable to use it, then you have failed. I know that is not the intent of his comment, but he is basically admitting that MS is failing to reach an influential population. It's not like they are reviewing web servers, or RDBMS's which are not supposed to be used by everyone.
If I hit CTRL-T, I typically want a new page. If I hit CTRL-Click (or mouse-wheel click) on a link to open in a new tab .. I want the history included.
If we can use deserts to generate Hydrogen, then we are in luck as we are getting more desert all the time!
Absolutely correct. I remember when Doc Brown and I used to use that old Delorean. Mr. Fusion could never get the car up to the requisite 88 mph.
I wasn't committing the straw man fallacy. I was pointing out that the ID tries to dress itself up like the Hume/Locke'ian cop-out of saying "Nothing else works, so there must be a god" in a humorous way.
Maybe I am confused on what exactly ID consists of. If you think that ID is simply an argument in support of a creator, then it belongs in philosophical conversations, but that is not what ID says. ID is a religious critique of a scientific theory. It tries to dress itself up as something else, but that is what it is. Where religion provides certainty through faith, science achieves results through skepticism.
That is why ID does not belong in anything besides a marketing course. It is one thing pretending to be another. Someone else in this thread refers to it as sophistry, an apt description if ever there were one.
Intelligent design is not so much a theory as a poorly formed complaint about evolution. It does fun things like say, "I'm a scientific theory" when according to the standard definition of scientific theories, it is not. As a practical matter, it has almost as many supporters in the evolutionary biology community as Lamarckism.
What's interesting about citing Locke is that his empiricism inspired Hume not only to (as I like to put it) kill certainty, but also to help more firmly lay the groundwork of what we call the scientific method. A method which provides many of the explanations he could not fathom when he was writing.
If you are arguing that Intelligent Design comes from the standpoint of 17th Century science, then I strongly encourage you to use that as a selling point to everyone you come across.
Umm.. Plato and Aristotle were theists, Kant was a hardcore Christian, Locke was Christian, Hume was probably a deist (I mean, he concluded that there was probably a god because we had no alternative explanation at the time). Heidegger was a Nazi. Just because I listed them doesn't mean that they were atheists. There is plenty of interesting epistemological ground to be covered that overlaps with religious theories. Intelligent Design is not one of them.
Note: Heidegger being a Nazi (while true) has no real bearing on the original comment. Don't overreact.
My main objection to addressing Intelligent Design in a philosophy class is that it would be a waste of time. Why not discuss Hume, Locke, Kant, Heidegger, Plato, Aristotle. If you like recent philosophers then discuss Hare, Quine, Foucault, or Foote.
.. Intelligent design is a manufactured theory that is far past the dividing line.
There is little of philosophical value in Intelligent Design. It may be of theological interest, and while the line between philosophy and theology can be indistinct
Actually, I think we've hit on the right class to teach Intelligent Design. A marketing class. Look kids, how do you find a way to rebrand an old idea to provide it with added legitimacy in the modern age?
I completely agree. That is why I am shorting 100,000 shares of Google stock!
I always thought the "balance to the Force" prophecy was suspect. In a world where 99% of the Jedis are light side, and there are 2 dark side Jedis .. bringing balance to the force would require killing a whole lot of light side Jedis. If Mace Windu was smart, he would have cut off Anakin's head the minute they saw him.
I fully agree that you should not buy products from companies whose practices you find abhorrent.
That doesn't mean the government should legislate to support your beliefs over someone elses. Just because some hardcore Republican refuses to buy Heinz ketchup doesn't mean the government should legislate against Heinz ketchup.
Companies are profit whores. When people vote with their checkbooks, companies change practices. GE is undergoing a major shift to reflect environmental interests. Surprisingly, as the government becomes worse on these issues, some (not many) corporations are becoming better because they want to kiss up to people who care about the issues.
The market is about giving power to the consumer. We just have to use it.
It all depends on the party. I remember hearing of a party 2,000 years ago. 13 guys attended, it was a bit of a sausage hang save for this whore who showed up for a little bit. Some say she had something going on with the guest of honor, but there are no records to confirm it.
The party was a total downer because one of the guys got pissed, ratted them out to the cops, and the guest of honor was nailed to two pieces of wood. I heard his Dad had to pick him up a few days later.
It should be mentioned that California has some pretty powerful movie interests. It's no surprise. She can't afford to alienate that contributor base.
On the other hand, Dems have an equally myopic view of copyright law as Repubs.
While I haven't RTFA, it should be noted that this is for pre-release works. There is no analogy to me loaning a CD to a friend on this one. This could clearly be thought of as someone stealing from their employer and then other people expanding the criminal action. I doubt this is as bad as many alarmists make it out to be.
I think the point of his comment was that if you took a modern baseball player and put them in the past they would dominate. By no means does that make them innately better than the old players. Presumably if you took a young Babe Ruth and put him through the training process (with all the medical and nutritional advantages) that current players go through, he would be competitive (if not dominate) now.
I'm seriously skeptical of this claim. It's not that I wouldn't put it past the RIAA & crew to feel that way, but stores like Wal-Mart and Sam Goody (or some other large music store) probably sell more music that iTunes does. They are probably more concerned that the acceptance of digital music will eliminate the most important leg of the traditional music tri-pod (distribution, marketing, and production -- aka driving the musician deeply into debt). When the distribution leg is removed, these companies will be forced to shrink substantially, and possibly innovate. Both of which are bad for lazy conglomerates already at the top of the heap.
By allowing iTunes & company to sell music online, they can now claim to have tried to take advantage of digital distribution. It allows the illusion of competition, but now that it's becoming a bigger threat, they need to shut it down.
It seems like you are arguing more with how the media presents these things (ie. simplistically and sensationistically) than how scientists actually view them.
.. can we agree that a) we've caused massive changes to the chemical composition of our atmosphere, and b) we should try to avoid destructive scenarios wherever possible.
... is prudent irregardless of the global warming issue .. which is well accepted by the (vast) majority of the scientific community.
Even if it is not completely certain that humans are causing a phenomena which will destroy modern civilization (reactionary phraseology intentional)
It's not like anyone reasonable is advocating that we kill off 80% of the planet's population and then live off the land wearing hair suits. Advocating conservation and moving away from non-renewable resources that cause health problems (eg. asthma) and tie our fates to a volatile (to say the least) section of the world
Could they all be wrong? You bet, scientific theories can all be proven false. That doesn't mean you shouldn't address problems recognized by the most reasoned thinking of the time.
Once the cutting-edge materials of engineering were steel girders, then transistors. And next, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is gambling ....
When I first read this sentence I thought they had started a gambling major due to the success of MIT Gamblers.
Saying that we should wait until there is a major disaster from global warming is like driving at night, knowing there is a cliff ahead of you somewhere, and saying, "We shouldn't turn or stop until we hit something."
.. being what they are .. will tap more and different renewable (and non-renewable) resources and bring about increased efficiency and conservation.
.. not only because of environmental improvements, but also because American companies would be the go to orgs for enviro technologies as the rest of the developing and developed world looks for ways to raise their living standards.
Also, given demographic changes, and the continuing de-agriculturalization of the American economy, more people live in and around cities (the notable exception being ex-urbs). To say that a large and growing percentage of the population is not directly and immediately affected by air pollution is incorrect, and all of us are being indirectly affected through climate change.
The blog article you link to is even crazier than the things that you hear from hardcore enviros on these issues. It's viewpoint on how conservation will be achieved uses the same logic that intelligent designers use to refute evolution. "How could evolution explain a bug that looks like a stick when the intermediary steps would be useless when trying to hide from a hawk." (The simplified answer is that 5% camoflauge is effective against the hawk who at the time had 5% of his current ability to recognize small objects)
The oil crisis in the late 70's caused us to develop technological changes that held oil consumption in the US to levels below that of the late 70's until the mid 90's. It's not like we are going to say, "Let's cut our energy consumption by 60% right now." It will be a gradual process and markets
Additionally, saying that the changes will be as harsh now as they were in the 70's is demonstrably false. OPEC already provided some evidence of that. Our recent increased oil costs have not crippled our economy. We are much less oil dependent then we were in the past, and we should be working as hard as humanly possible to become less dependent on oil (and coal, gas, and in the long term nuclear (fission)). A little inconvenience now will pay off huge dividends in the future
I think you are looking at this question improperly. It's a question of whether the investment will cause economic development in high enough quantity to cover the cost .. as compared to other uses of tax dollars.
As an imperfect analogy, just because everyone cannot afford a car, does that make government investment in roads bad? It's just a question of opportunity cost. I prefer to think of this sort of service as a good infrastructure investment -- which is good to do with public dollars.
While I completely agree with your comment .. we never realistically posed a military threat to N. Korea. Kim could mortar Seoul off the face of the planet before we could ever launch a crippling strike on N. Korea. And given all the new Worlds of Warcraft players in S. Korea, that might cripple our economy.