Voting for WHOM? There's no alternative, if you vote for the other guy you just exchange jackasses at a high level. Gratz.
Assuming you're from the US, you live in a democracy and have a vote like everyone else. If you can't be arsed to do anything about the political situation, that is your problem.
it does make you think about George Orwell's book - "1984" and realize that you honestly DO NOT have any personal PRIVACY anymore, from the moment you leave your front door.
In "1984" the surveillance was from the telescreen in your own front room. But slippery slope arguments are always popular on slashdot.
CCTV cameras can only catch you misbehaving in public, where you have no privacy anyway.
Let me get this straight. He's doing something non-violent and *LEGAL*, but you hope that someone "kicks the shit out of him".
You think the proper response for *not* committing an illegal act is to commit assault and battery?
Tool.
Yes, sometimes the correct response to something non-violent and legal is to use violence.
If someone (adult) was harrassing one of my kids and making them cry I would feel entirely justified in lamping the fucker, whether what he was doing was legal or not.
If some neo-Nazis want to have a march, I would feel entirely justified in disrupting it with violence (no, I'm not from the US and do not consider freedom of speech for fascists to be sacrosanct).
DRM is more of a philosophical than practical problem. It annoys geeks, but doesn't seem to matter to most normal consumers.
Personally, I think that if you have philosophical objections to material with DRM then you should just not buy that material. If enough people did this, DRM would be abandoned. If you pirate it instead, nothing changes. If not enough peple care to boycott DRM-encumbered products, that just means DRM isn't that important to must people.
I'm glad my karma is excellent, because any athiests with mod points are going to rip me a new one.
I'm an atheist and wouldn't mod you down just for expressing your beliefs in a reasonable way: as people keep saying here, there is no "-1 disagree" option. Rather, I would reply to your post and argue about your assumptions and line of reasoning, however fruitless that would ultimately be.
Incidentally, you're at score: 5 as I post this, so I think you'll find there are plenty of Christians with mod points too.
All atheist should visit Cancer hospitals to challenge their own perspectives on religion. Faith is a great coping mechanism. Not just for the patient but their families.
When you suffer a bereavement, it would indeed be a comfort to receive proof that they are now in heaven/another plane of existence/not just worm food.
Unfortunately, there is absolutely no convincing evidence for this, and "faith" that it is true is meaningless as an argument to someone without faith.
Visiting a cancer hospital is simply evidence that the universe does not care about pointless individual human suffering. If you can get some religious comfort out of that, good luck to you.
Tantric sex is pretty cool because it teaches you awareness and presence, for example.
It also, if you're Sting, allows you to have sex non-stop for eight hours or something, which must be invaluable if you're a pornstar, but a big chunk out of your day for a normal working stiff. [*]
Uh huh. You say...there IS solid scientific research
then go on to cite a single source, which wikipedia says is non-peerreviewed and has its own controversies section. Try again.
(posting anon to preserve mods I made earlier)
Why would a fucking book review be peer reviewed?
New Scientist isn't supposed to be an academic journal of original research, so your criticism is ridiculous. It would be like linking to a BBC review of Windows 8 or the latest iPhone and complaining that it wasn't written by an acknowledged PhD in computer science.
Do you mean literal rebirth, i.e. a human mind/soul moving to a new body when the old one dies?
Because that seems as mystical and bizarre as the Abrahamic heaven.
I can see that the idea of karma is good as an ethical metaphor, as a variation on "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" but as a description of reality it seems...unhelpful.
Reading that post gave me an almost religious feeling of calm and detachment from mundane reality; I felt as though I were outside the universe looking down into the soul of the insanely misguided adman who thought slashdot was a good place to spam for ladies high heeled shoes. It was as though a great Zen master were asking me to contemplate the essential meaninglessness of physical reality.
Buddhism is not about ignorance. To make a computing analogy, Buddhism is about a method of programing to allow supercomputing while never using more than 0% of the CPU.
You'd have done better to stick to the traditionally stupid slashdot car analogy rather than attempt a computing one.
How about:
To make a car analogy, Buddhism is about a method of driving to allow the car to drive itself, or to allow the car and driver to become one, or to allow the driver to drive as though he were both the road and the tyres, or to allow the illusions that are car and driver to vanish.
The article says that this monk was eschewing intimate relationships and a career. This means that he basically (for a long time) had no peers, which could solve this apparent contradiction.
Your peers aren't limited to people you're fucking or working with, genius.
Actually some time ago I read about a study that said basically that a person feels happier if he was performing (in some respect) better than another person. This form of happiness comes with the UNhappiness of other people. The happiest man alive is doing way better than his peers, while his peers must be feeling very unhappy.
No, SOME people think that happiness is a dog-eat-dog competition. They are generally the ones who are unhappiest, as there always bigger and fiercer dogs around somewhere, even if only in the future when you are old, shrunken and toothless.
What did I get out of it, why did I do it for several years? Because it gave me an incredible sense of humility and a true understanding of what I have in life. And it felt good to, on some minimal level, help someone feel a bit better.
And this is exactly the point I was making...
But he could have got that same feeling by posting off a cheque to a homeless charity if that's all it was about. On a level which you seem unable to comprehend, he wanted to share in other people's suffering directly in order to understand it, and, yes, I suppose you could say that he was "selfishly" making himself a better person, more rounded and self-actualized person by doing so.
Just because you get something in return for being non-selfish at points does not mean you were being secretly selfish. For example, you can give someone a present and get in return a good feeling. The good feeling is selfish, but the giving of the present was altruistic. They don't cancel each other out and leave only selfishness. Both exist.
I completely agree, but think we're perhaps using different definitions of "selfish". I define the above act as selfish because the act would not have been performed had there been no reward (or expectation of reward) through the good feelings that come from giving the present.
The trouble is, by using your own special definition of "selfish" as meaning "anything from which I get even the tiniest amount of pleasure however selfless it at first appears" you are begging the question.
By any normal definition, if you do something that is partly to make you feel good and partly to make someone else feel good, that is not a purely selfish act.
A mother throwing herself in front of a car to save her child might be acting in her species self interest, but she's not under any circumstances acting INTENTIONALLY in her OWN percieved self interest.
But here you're twisting what I was saying.
I believe the mother IS acting in her own interest - completely selfishly. She derives happiness from the safety and wellbeing of her child. She knows she'd be devastated if the child were killed.
But deriving happiness from the safety and wellbeing of others is, by definition, not selfish.
You are making a fundamental error in assuming that because something somehow relates back to your self that it is selfish.
No I think the GP's argument makes sense even if the words he uses make it sound horrible. The person who would give up their life to protect others is doing it because they would rather protect others than live to see them die. At a lower level, they're doing what pleases themselves - "selfish" isn't really the right word.
You can twist any action to make it sound "selfish" if that is your world view and you insist on pigeonholing everyone in the same mean little slot as yourself.
A soldier throws himself on a grenade to save his comrades? He's just doing it for the posthumous glory.
A father donates a kidney to his child at the risk of diminishing his own life quality and expectancy? He's just following evolution to give his DNA the chance to reproduce via the kid.
Someone volunteers to teach disadvantaged youths after work hours? They just want a chance to hook up with insecure young people to sexually exploit them.
Etc. etc. etc.
> Helping others can in fact make you feel miserable and often does.
"Beware of altruism. It is based on self-deception, the root of all evil." - Robert A. Heinlein
That just proves that Heinlein is as much of a twat as Ayn Rand, albeit his children's books are marginally more readable than her bilge.
Absolutely, and that's essentially my reasoning for "being a nice guy" as stated. It's also one of the reasons I'm more "left" leaning politically - I want society to take care of the lesser fortunate people so I don't have to deal with as much poverty (and associated crime) in my surroundings.
"The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping."
Cause happiness have nothing to do with material possessions.
Bullshit.
Try living without clothes, food, and a place to sleep - all of which are material possessions. See just how happy you are.
The point is that most people (and certainly anyone reading slashdot) will already have clothes, food and a place to sleep anyway, it is the pursuit of material possessions over and above the minimum that is useless in terms of increasing happiness.
Not starving to death doesn't mean you're happy, it just means you're not dreadfully unhappy.
Slashdot Mirror
Voting for WHOM? There's no alternative, if you vote for the other guy you just exchange jackasses at a high level. Gratz.
Assuming you're from the US, you live in a democracy and have a vote like everyone else. If you can't be arsed to do anything about the political situation, that is your problem.
it does make you think about George Orwell's book - "1984" and realize that you honestly DO NOT have any personal PRIVACY anymore, from the moment you leave your front door.
In "1984" the surveillance was from the telescreen in your own front room. But slippery slope arguments are always popular on slashdot.
CCTV cameras can only catch you misbehaving in public, where you have no privacy anyway.
Let me get this straight. He's doing something non-violent and *LEGAL*, but you hope that someone "kicks the shit out of him".
You think the proper response for *not* committing an illegal act is to commit assault and battery?
Tool.
Yes, sometimes the correct response to something non-violent and legal is to use violence.
If someone (adult) was harrassing one of my kids and making them cry I would feel entirely justified in lamping the fucker, whether what he was doing was legal or not.
If some neo-Nazis want to have a march, I would feel entirely justified in disrupting it with violence (no, I'm not from the US and do not consider freedom of speech for fascists to be sacrosanct).
DRM is more of a philosophical than practical problem. It annoys geeks, but doesn't seem to matter to most normal consumers.
Personally, I think that if you have philosophical objections to material with DRM then you should just not buy that material. If enough people did this, DRM would be abandoned. If you pirate it instead, nothing changes. If not enough peple care to boycott DRM-encumbered products, that just means DRM isn't that important to must people.
I'm glad my karma is excellent, because any athiests with mod points are going to rip me a new one.
I'm an atheist and wouldn't mod you down just for expressing your beliefs in a reasonable way: as people keep saying here, there is no "-1 disagree" option. Rather, I would reply to your post and argue about your assumptions and line of reasoning, however fruitless that would ultimately be.
Incidentally, you're at score: 5 as I post this, so I think you'll find there are plenty of Christians with mod points too.
Speaking as a parent, I'd say that chiuldren were a poor substitute for sex.
All atheist should visit Cancer hospitals to challenge their own perspectives on religion. Faith is a great coping mechanism. Not just for the patient but their families.
When you suffer a bereavement, it would indeed be a comfort to receive proof that they are now in heaven/another plane of existence/not just worm food.
Unfortunately, there is absolutely no convincing evidence for this, and "faith" that it is true is meaningless as an argument to someone without faith.
Visiting a cancer hospital is simply evidence that the universe does not care about pointless individual human suffering. If you can get some religious comfort out of that, good luck to you.
There are also dogmatic atheists (mostly communists) who ordered that anyone who professed a religion be executed.
That was a bit harsh. They should have been allowed to recant and do some community service instead.
Tantric sex is pretty cool because it teaches you awareness and presence, for example.
It also, if you're Sting, allows you to have sex non-stop for eight hours or something, which must be invaluable if you're a pornstar, but a big chunk out of your day for a normal working stiff. [*]
Pun intended. Sorry.
Uh huh. You say ...there IS solid scientific research
then go on to cite a single source, which wikipedia says is non-peerreviewed and has its own controversies section. Try again.
(posting anon to preserve mods I made earlier)
Why would a fucking book review be peer reviewed?
New Scientist isn't supposed to be an academic journal of original research, so your criticism is ridiculous. It would be like linking to a BBC review of Windows 8 or the latest iPhone and complaining that it wasn't written by an acknowledged PhD in computer science.
I believe in rebirth and the law of karma.
Do you mean literal rebirth, i.e. a human mind/soul moving to a new body when the old one dies?
Because that seems as mystical and bizarre as the Abrahamic heaven.
I can see that the idea of karma is good as an ethical metaphor, as a variation on "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" but as a description of reality it seems...unhelpful.
Reading that post gave me an almost religious feeling of calm and detachment from mundane reality; I felt as though I were outside the universe looking down into the soul of the insanely misguided adman who thought slashdot was a good place to spam for ladies high heeled shoes. It was as though a great Zen master were asking me to contemplate the essential meaninglessness of physical reality.
Buddhism is not about ignorance. To make a computing analogy, Buddhism is about a method of programing to allow supercomputing while never using more than 0% of the CPU.
You'd have done better to stick to the traditionally stupid slashdot car analogy rather than attempt a computing one.
How about:
To make a car analogy, Buddhism is about a method of driving to allow the car to drive itself, or to allow the car and driver to become one, or to allow the driver to drive as though he were both the road and the tyres, or to allow the illusions that are car and driver to vanish.
The article says that this monk was eschewing intimate relationships and a career. This means that he basically (for a long time) had no peers, which could solve this apparent contradiction.
Your peers aren't limited to people you're fucking or working with, genius.
Actually some time ago I read about a study that said basically that a person feels happier if he was performing (in some respect) better than another person. This form of happiness comes with the UNhappiness of other people. The happiest man alive is doing way better than his peers, while his peers must be feeling very unhappy.
No, SOME people think that happiness is a dog-eat-dog competition. They are generally the ones who are unhappiest, as there always bigger and fiercer dogs around somewhere, even if only in the future when you are old, shrunken and toothless.
What did I get out of it, why did I do it for several years? Because it gave me an incredible sense of humility and a true understanding of what I have in life. And it felt good to, on some minimal level, help someone feel a bit better.
And this is exactly the point I was making...
But he could have got that same feeling by posting off a cheque to a homeless charity if that's all it was about. On a level which you seem unable to comprehend, he wanted to share in other people's suffering directly in order to understand it, and, yes, I suppose you could say that he was "selfishly" making himself a better person, more rounded and self-actualized person by doing so.
Just because you get something in return for being non-selfish at points does not mean you were being secretly selfish. For example, you can give someone a present and get in return a good feeling. The good feeling is selfish, but the giving of the present was altruistic. They don't cancel each other out and leave only selfishness. Both exist.
I completely agree, but think we're perhaps using different definitions of "selfish". I define the above act as selfish because the act would not have been performed had there been no reward (or expectation of reward) through the good feelings that come from giving the present.
The trouble is, by using your own special definition of "selfish" as meaning "anything from which I get even the tiniest amount of pleasure however selfless it at first appears" you are begging the question.
By any normal definition, if you do something that is partly to make you feel good and partly to make someone else feel good, that is not a purely selfish act.
A mother throwing herself in front of a car to save her child might be acting in her species self interest, but she's not under any circumstances acting INTENTIONALLY in her OWN percieved self interest .
But here you're twisting what I was saying. I believe the mother IS acting in her own interest - completely selfishly. She derives happiness from the safety and wellbeing of her child. She knows she'd be devastated if the child were killed.
But deriving happiness from the safety and wellbeing of others is, by definition, not selfish.
You are making a fundamental error in assuming that because something somehow relates back to your self that it is selfish.
No I think the GP's argument makes sense even if the words he uses make it sound horrible. The person who would give up their life to protect others is doing it because they would rather protect others than live to see them die. At a lower level, they're doing what pleases themselves - "selfish" isn't really the right word.
You can twist any action to make it sound "selfish" if that is your world view and you insist on pigeonholing everyone in the same mean little slot as yourself.
A soldier throws himself on a grenade to save his comrades? He's just doing it for the posthumous glory.
A father donates a kidney to his child at the risk of diminishing his own life quality and expectancy? He's just following evolution to give his DNA the chance to reproduce via the kid.
Someone volunteers to teach disadvantaged youths after work hours? They just want a chance to hook up with insecure young people to sexually exploit them. Etc. etc. etc.
> Helping others can in fact make you feel miserable and often does. "Beware of altruism. It is based on self-deception, the root of all evil." - Robert A. Heinlein
That just proves that Heinlein is as much of a twat as Ayn Rand, albeit his children's books are marginally more readable than her bilge.
They don't have the same 'feeling on cloud nine' feeling you can get with cigs
I'm a keen smoker, but I've never got that feeling from smoking tobacco.
It's more of a calming, relaxing feeling than a high.
Absolutely, and that's essentially my reasoning for "being a nice guy" as stated. It's also one of the reasons I'm more "left" leaning politically - I want society to take care of the lesser fortunate people so I don't have to deal with as much poverty (and associated crime) in my surroundings.
"The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping."
Because there's no selfish reason to help.
I contest that every human being is either inherently ENTIRELY selfish, or have something wrong with them (i.e. insanity)
Enter the Randroids.
And some people are perfectly happy with their little toys.
Being happy with something is not the same as being happy in yourself.
No one is denying that toys can provide pleasure. It's just that having a bit of pleasure doesn't in itself make you happy overall.
Cause happiness have nothing to do with material possessions.
Bullshit.
Try living without clothes, food, and a place to sleep - all of which are material possessions. See just how happy you are.
The point is that most people (and certainly anyone reading slashdot) will already have clothes, food and a place to sleep anyway, it is the pursuit of material possessions over and above the minimum that is useless in terms of increasing happiness.
Not starving to death doesn't mean you're happy, it just means you're not dreadfully unhappy.