Your progeny just might feel more generous towards us if we took a longer view of things.
I couldn't agree more. Let's just hope that we take a longer view on the massive amount of debt we are collecting. Our progeny will not appreciate our destroying all their wealth either.
WTF? It's bad if you are a human. Good/bad are words that have context: human context.
nice job being human centric. this is natural evolution. there is no good/bad, those are constructs you have imposed on the world to identify and protect your percieved self-interests.
and protecting them is entirely consistant with the nature of living organisms.
or does disregarding your own self interest sound like something natural evolution would select for?
the *universe* has nothing to do with good/bad, it may very well be that killing all humanitiy is "good" for the planet. you just don't want to admit it
A common view is that moral consideration is only warranted for moral agents that are capable of engaging in moral reasoning, and thus capable of reciprocating moral consideration.
That is total a rationalist Enlightenment cop out.
if I am reasonable then my conclusions are driven by the facts at hand and the application of logic.
By your standard it would be perfectly ok to torture or kill anyone who given the same facts disagrees with me on what is moral.
If I am reasonable and they reach a different conclusion based on the same facts, then they must be unreasonable and if they are unreasonable then they are not capable of reciprocating moral consideration.
at the same time, by your argument they would be within their rights to kill me, as they would think that it is me and not them who is not worthy of moral consideration.
Since we both know this, there is a good incentive to be the first person to shoot.
Of course the final test of who is reasonable, and therefore who is moral, is who has the best weapons.
there is also a question of existence. those video game characters do not exist in a sense that we value. Because we do not depend on them in the least. on the other hand we value a lobsters existence because as a living creature it is a part of our eco system and we depend on one another.
We do not depend on those video game characters in the least bit.
to display what we might call callous disregard for the experiences of the lobster is only different in quantity than demonstrating callous disregard for the experiences of a human being.
Whether this matters to you is another issue.
quite frankly if I met a person who likes to burn new cars (and does it), I would think of them as being immoral as well. we don't need to quantify if cars physically feel pain.
A lobster is like an insect... both almost programmed like simple robots.
Neither a lobster, nor an insect is analagous to a "simple" robot.
Furthermore as you have CONSTRUCTED this robot with the assumption that it feels no pain.
On the other hand the issue of lobsters is still open.
Your proof depends on the inference that lobsters feel no pain, based only on the assumption that robots feel no pain. You haven't proven anything.
A suitably complex robot should theoretically experience something analagous to pain. I have no basis to assume your robot is not suitably complex. and especially if the heat it is trying to escape threatens its existence, I would say this is very analagous to pain.
but if this line of reasoning is sound, then we can take it all the way to the ultimate conclusion that pain itself does not exist and absolutely EVERYTHING is simply a dumb reflex.
As the same time, I agree with you. Nearly every living thing has a stimulus response to being damaged, including many plants. You have to draw the line somewhere.
Are you saying that since plants feel pain it is ok to torture lobsters?
Intelligent Robots may be intelligent enough to know what is good for humanity, but being a robot a robot has only a vested interest in doing what is good for robot-kind.
To assume that robots will do what is good for its closest competition is to fly in the face of billions of years of natural selection.
NO SPECIES IN EXISTENCE HAS EVER DONE ANYTHING PURELY FOR THE BENEFIT OF ANOTHER SPECIES.
But saying that something is fundamentally unpredictable is the same as saying that it has no deterministic cause. If that is the case, then the 'free' part of your will must be something that you - your mind - doesn't determine. But if so, then can it really be called your will?
because your "mind" in this context is assumed to be supernatural. If you have a supernatural mind, then it can be fundamentally unpredictable and called 'your will'.
People never quite understand that the government has the most to gain by making things illegal.
Makes sense for a Monarchy. In a republic it is nonsensical to talk about the government as if it were a separate entity. The government is We The People.
Norton's forum is not a government. "Censorship" is done by governments, not private businesses. Private businesses have the right to conduct their own business however they see fit.
Censorship is when you try to stop someone else from expressing himself. And just to clarify, dictators and absolute monarchs have always had the right to conduct business however they see fit, including censorship, arbitrary arrest and even murder. So by your logic even government censorship is ok as long as it isn't the US government.
There's a difference between censorship on a private message board operated by a private company, and censorship by a state with authority over its citizens. But that seems to be a really hard concept for the average internet user to grasp.
Corporations are legal entities which only exist because the state creates the framework which allows them to exist. They are not human beings (created by God etc) with an independent existence.
There is a difference between censorship practiced by a private individual who has an inherent natural ability to control things in his possession and is also liable without limit for any harm he may cause to others and a corporation which has no ability or power to do anything whatsoever except what the State gives to it, and limited liability towards the owners.
It is an act of congress which allows corporations to exist. That act should not result in a violation of the bill of rights. And if it does, it certainly can not be justified merely by saying it is the consequence of the act of congress and not congress itself which violates the bill of rights. That would be like saying "I didn't kill you, it was the bullet that flew out of my gun that killed you".
I would argue that when a corporation of people attempt to violate the human rights enumerated in the constitution of the United States, the US government has a constitutional obligation to revoke its legal protections of that body of people. In effect the limited liability corporation would revert to a partnership with full liability to all its owners (shareholders).
I would argue that any corporation of private individuals that goes to the People of the Unites States (the government) seeking limited liability for its members (shareholders) is also promising to uphold the Constitution of the United States.
What you call barbarism I call self-defense. You don't respond to a terrorist attack by filing a lawsuit -- you respond by killing and/or imprisoning those responsible.
And killing 100 times as many innocent bystanders in the process -- that's ok how?
Putting aside the ridiculous assumption that you have a right to the product of someone else's creative efforts by virtue of being born, people gotta eat, right?
Aren't you the one making a ridiculous assumption?
What right do you have to deny me the product of my creative efforts by telling me what I can and can not copy using my own materials. It isn't like anyone stole anything from you when they purchase a copy of your latest masterpiece.
The product of your creative effort is the ORIGINAL. My copies I made on my own without your help. You might hope I don't copy your work but you have no natural authority over my own hand and my own possessions.
any copies which I produce of your work which is the product of my creative effort not yours. You might call it uncreative, but I say I worked, and out of that work something was created. if people are willing to pay for mere copies, then the market has spoken.
Copyright is a form of government taxation on the public for the welfare of copyright owners just like any other form of legal monopoly that interferes with absolute and utter free competition.
the only reason it exists is because the public believes that this specific form of welfare actually benefits the public. It is NOT for the benefit of the recipients. authors are not invalids. You can go get a job just like anybody else.
I might be able to swallow a mouthful of sea water when I'm at the beach, but that doesn't mean I'll be able to finish the rest of the ocean.
It's a fallacy, pure and simple. It's an argument based on very shaky intuition based on small, trivial cases (where relevant variables do not change as a result of A happening), but fails to hold for most situations in life.
You are using the exact same reasoning that you are calling a fallacy.
You said "it fails to hold for most situations in life" and from that you induce that this predicts a failure to hold up for other situations a priori.
If you disagree with the reasoning behind the "slippery slope" argument, then you can not rely on that same reasoning yourself.
even if you had any empirical evidence, which you don't.
swallowing sea water is not analogous to giving up civil liberties.
Old growth forests have maximized the amount of carbon they will ever sequester and don't even really provide a lot of oxygen to the environment (compared to other sources). Cutting them down is not inherently bad, as long as you aren't freeing up that carbon--if you're making paper or wooden products out of the trees (two-by-fours, chairs, whatever), it's fine.
killing endangered animals is not inherently bad either. As long as all the elephants and tigers have their carbon properly sequestered into house hold products or jewelry it's fine.
Regardless of who is actually "right", they feel the same way about us.
Scripture makes it very clear how you are supposed to feel about infidels and heretics. But just because you base your beliefs on scripture that doesn't mean everyone who disagree with you is being equally irrational and nonobjective.
If the warrant states that stolen TV's will be found in the back room, they can only (ONLY) search the back room for stolen TV's. If they see a darkened room full of people smoking hash, which is NOT the back room, they can't touch them. Not without a probable cause affidavit and a new warrant. They can't touch, arrest, etc, etc, those people, unless there is a direct threat to the officer(s).
wrong wrong wrong. 1.cops are allowed to act immediately to stop a crime in progress.
2. cops are allowed to seize evidence without a warrant provided it was found in "plain sight".
to be found in plain sight, the cops must not have been specifically searching for it. the cops must have been present strictly for a legitimate purpose. the nature of the item must be immediately apparent to the unaided senses of the police officer.
if they see anything that is obviously illegal, it makes no difference what they were actually searching for. they can seize the other stuff also.
So, if I can't call up the DMV and find out who a particular license plate is registered to, the cops should need a warrant to get that information to follow a lead in a case?
bad analogy. The license itself is issued by the state to a specific vehicle in the name of a specific named owner, specifically for the purpose of the state being able to track who owns what car. It is the state that gave you the license plate number at your request, so obviously the state already knows your license plate number.
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Your progeny just might feel more generous towards us if we took a longer view of things.
I couldn't agree more. Let's just hope that we take a longer view on the massive amount of debt we are collecting. Our progeny will not appreciate our destroying all their wealth either.
debt does not destroy wealth.
WTF? It's bad if you are a human. Good/bad are words that have context: human context.
nice job being human centric. this is natural evolution. there is no good/bad, those are constructs you have imposed on the world to identify and protect your percieved self-interests.
and protecting them is entirely consistant with the nature of living organisms.
or does disregarding your own self interest sound like something natural evolution would select for?
the *universe* has nothing to do with good/bad, it may very well be that killing all humanitiy is "good" for the planet. you just don't want to admit it
if thats what you think, then kill yourself.
A common view is that moral consideration is only warranted for moral agents that are capable of engaging in moral reasoning, and thus capable of reciprocating moral consideration.
That is total a rationalist Enlightenment cop out.
if I am reasonable then my conclusions are driven by the facts at hand and the application of logic.
By your standard it would be perfectly ok to torture or kill anyone who given the same facts disagrees with me on what is moral.
If I am reasonable and they reach a different conclusion based on the same facts, then they must be unreasonable and if they are unreasonable then they are not capable of reciprocating moral consideration.
at the same time, by your argument they would be within their rights to kill me, as they would think that it is me and not them who is not worthy of moral consideration.
Since we both know this, there is a good incentive to be the first person to shoot.
Of course the final test of who is reasonable, and therefore who is moral, is who has the best weapons.
there is also a question of existence. those video game characters do not exist in a sense that we value. Because we do not depend on them in the least. on the other hand we value a lobsters existence because as a living creature it is a part of our eco system and we depend on one another.
We do not depend on those video game characters in the least bit.
to display what we might call callous disregard for the experiences of the lobster is only different in quantity than demonstrating callous disregard for the experiences of a human being.
Whether this matters to you is another issue.
quite frankly if I met a person who likes to burn new cars (and does it), I would think of them as being immoral as well. we don't need to quantify if cars physically feel pain.
A lobster is like an insect... both almost programmed like simple robots.
Neither a lobster, nor an insect is analagous to a "simple" robot.
Furthermore as you have CONSTRUCTED this robot with the assumption that it feels no pain.
On the other hand the issue of lobsters is still open.
Your proof depends on the inference that lobsters feel no pain, based only on the assumption that robots feel no pain. You haven't proven anything.
A suitably complex robot should theoretically experience something analagous to pain. I have no basis to assume your robot is not suitably complex. and especially if the heat it is trying to escape threatens its existence, I would say this is very analagous to pain.
but if this line of reasoning is sound, then we can take it all the way to the ultimate conclusion that pain itself does not exist and absolutely EVERYTHING is simply a dumb reflex.
As the same time, I agree with you. Nearly every living thing has a stimulus response to being damaged, including many plants. You have to draw the line somewhere.
Are you saying that since plants feel pain it is ok to torture lobsters?
thats slightly MORE fucked up. Laws should not be made to encourage people to NOT report crimes.
False analogy.
Intelligent Robots may be intelligent enough to know what is good for humanity, but being a robot a robot has only a vested interest in doing what is good for robot-kind.
To assume that robots will do what is good for its closest competition is to fly in the face of billions of years of natural selection.
NO SPECIES IN EXISTENCE HAS EVER DONE ANYTHING PURELY FOR THE BENEFIT OF ANOTHER SPECIES.
Typical American attitude at the moment.
"Woe me, my country is going to implode and it's the most corrupt and worst place on the planet!"
Fucking Americans, try living in some of these other places before whining about how bad your own place is.
I don't recall anyone saying they thought America is the "worst place on the planet.". So that is just a complete straw man.
No matter how corrupt America is, you would say that American's should not complain because there is some other place that happens to be worse.
But saying that something is fundamentally unpredictable is the same as saying that it has no deterministic cause. If that is the case, then the 'free' part of your will must be something that you - your mind - doesn't determine. But if so, then can it really be called your will?
because your "mind" in this context is assumed to be supernatural. If you have a supernatural mind, then it can be fundamentally unpredictable and called 'your will'.
People never quite understand that the government has the most to gain by making things illegal.
Makes sense for a Monarchy. In a republic it is nonsensical to talk about the government as if it were a separate entity. The government is We The People.
Norton's forum is not a government. "Censorship" is done by governments, not private businesses. Private businesses have the right to conduct their own business however they see fit.
Censorship is when you try to stop someone else from expressing himself. And just to clarify, dictators and absolute monarchs have always had the right to conduct business however they see fit, including censorship, arbitrary arrest and even murder. So by your logic even government censorship is ok as long as it isn't the US government.
There's a difference between censorship on a private message board operated by a private company, and censorship by a state with authority over its citizens. But that seems to be a really hard concept for the average internet user to grasp.
Corporations are legal entities which only exist because the state creates the framework which allows them to exist. They are not human beings (created by God etc) with an independent existence.
There is a difference between censorship practiced by a private individual who has an inherent natural ability to control things in his possession and is also liable without limit for any harm he may cause to others and a corporation which has no ability or power to do anything whatsoever except what the State gives to it, and limited liability towards the owners.
It is an act of congress which allows corporations to exist. That act should not result in a violation of the bill of rights. And if it does, it certainly can not be justified merely by saying it is the consequence of the act of congress and not congress itself which violates the bill of rights. That would be like saying "I didn't kill you, it was the bullet that flew out of my gun that killed you".
I would argue that when a corporation of people attempt to violate the human rights enumerated in the constitution of the United States, the US government has a constitutional obligation to revoke its legal protections of that body of people. In effect the limited liability corporation would revert to a partnership with full liability to all its owners (shareholders).
I would argue that any corporation of private individuals that goes to the People of the Unites States (the government) seeking limited liability for its members (shareholders) is also promising to uphold the Constitution of the United States.
What you call barbarism I call self-defense. You don't respond to a terrorist attack by filing a lawsuit -- you respond by killing and/or imprisoning those responsible.
And killing 100 times as many innocent bystanders in the process -- that's ok how?
It also raises the question: if light waves can't escape a black hole then why can gravitational waves?
indeed. one would almost think light and gravity waves are not the same kind of thing.
if no one is willing to pay them, then the free market has spoken. no one wants the book to be written.
Putting aside the ridiculous assumption that you have a right to the product of someone else's creative efforts by virtue of being born, people gotta eat, right?
Aren't you the one making a ridiculous assumption?
What right do you have to deny me the product of my creative efforts by telling me what I can and can not copy using my own materials. It isn't like anyone stole anything from you when they purchase a copy of your latest masterpiece.
The product of your creative effort is the ORIGINAL. My copies I made on my own without your help. You might hope I don't copy your work but you have no natural authority over my own hand and my own possessions.
any copies which I produce of your work which is the product of my creative effort not yours. You might call it uncreative, but I say I worked, and out of that work something was created. if people are willing to pay for mere copies, then the market has spoken.
Copyright is a form of government taxation on the public for the welfare of copyright owners just like any other form of legal monopoly that interferes with absolute and utter free competition.
the only reason it exists is because the public believes that this specific form of welfare actually benefits the public. It is NOT for the benefit of the recipients. authors are not invalids. You can go get a job just like anybody else.
I might be able to swallow a mouthful of sea water when I'm at the beach, but that doesn't mean I'll be able to finish the rest of the ocean.
It's a fallacy, pure and simple. It's an argument based on very shaky intuition based on small, trivial cases (where relevant variables do not change as a result of A happening), but fails to hold for most situations in life.
You are using the exact same reasoning that you are calling a fallacy.
You said "it fails to hold for most situations in life" and from that you induce that this predicts a failure to hold up for other situations a priori.
If you disagree with the reasoning behind the "slippery slope" argument, then you can not rely on that same reasoning yourself.
even if you had any empirical evidence, which you don't.
swallowing sea water is not analogous to giving up civil liberties.
Old growth forests have maximized the amount of carbon they will ever sequester and don't even really provide a lot of oxygen to the environment (compared to other sources). Cutting them down is not inherently bad, as long as you aren't freeing up that carbon--if you're making paper or wooden products out of the trees (two-by-fours, chairs, whatever), it's fine.
killing endangered animals is not inherently bad either. As long as all the elephants and tigers have their carbon properly sequestered into house hold products or jewelry it's fine.
however, when you DO find something of value, guess what: you cash out and become a millionaire
who defines what has value and who is going to pay the millions?
please don't say the free market. You'll make yourself look like a religious nut.
this is the nature of science
wait... that sounds remarkably like the following phrase "God wills it!"
Regardless of who is actually "right", they feel the same way about us.
Scripture makes it very clear how you are supposed to feel about infidels and heretics. But just because you base your beliefs on scripture that doesn't mean everyone who disagree with you is being equally irrational and nonobjective.
If the warrant states that stolen TV's will be found in the back room, they can only (ONLY) search the back room for stolen TV's. If they see a darkened room full of people smoking hash, which is NOT the back room, they can't touch them. Not without a probable cause affidavit and a new warrant. They can't touch, arrest, etc, etc, those people, unless there is a direct threat to the officer(s).
wrong wrong wrong.
1.cops are allowed to act immediately to stop a crime in progress.
2. cops are allowed to seize evidence without a warrant provided it was found in "plain sight".
to be found in plain sight, the cops must not have been specifically searching for it. the cops must have been present strictly for a legitimate purpose. the nature of the item must be immediately apparent to the unaided senses of the police officer.
if they see anything that is obviously illegal, it makes no difference what they were actually searching for. they can seize the other stuff also.
So, if I can't call up the DMV and find out who a particular license plate is registered to, the cops should need a warrant to get that information to follow a lead in a case?
bad analogy. The license itself is issued by the state to a specific vehicle in the name of a specific named owner, specifically for the purpose of the state being able to track who owns what car.
It is the state that gave you the license plate number at your request, so obviously the state already knows your license plate number.
IP addresss are NOT issued by the state.
companies could probably provide an even better standard of living for their employees if they were located in other countries.
you believe that IBM employees moving overseas to India will experience a net improvement in their standards of living?
they will look at their father's mode of employment the way we look at blacksmithing jobs and chimney sweeping
but will it make them happy?