After doing some investigation on the ship's computer, he discovers that former Governor Kodos had ordered the executions of more than half Tarsus IV's population after the food supply was all but destroyed by a fungus. He also uncovers evidence that Kodos applied his own personal theories of eugenics when he chose who lived or died. Furthermore, the vital resupply ships that could have saved the whole colony arrived much sooner than Kodos had anticipated rendering all the executions unnecessary.
--- He ordered half of the population involuntarily killed based on his personal preferences. Think of that in earth terms, 3 billion people murdered.
The timing of the arrival of the resupply ship arrival doesn't matter. Even if they'd arrived when the population was down to 1 billion from subsequent starvation, the initial murder of 3 billion people would have been evil.
Yes, he was evil. And he was presented as evil and full of remorse.
The only exit for him was suicide.
I could see either volunteering to kill yourself or taking the evil/harsh route and killing the 10% that needed to be killed to save everyone and then killing yourself.
Killing everyone and then living on-- pretty much pure evil.
The only case where an exception is made is in the military where you understand in advance that your officers may have to make orders like that. Since you "sort of consented in advance" it's acceptable unless the commander is being careless.
To some degree, we the citizens by voting and continuing to reside in our countries may "sort of consent in advance" to our civilian authorities making hard choices like this as well. But we tend to bust their asses for it afterwards unless they handle it perfectly.
Choosing to let everyone starve is the good choice if all decide to starve and none decide to sacrifice themselves. That the entire group dies isn't an evil event since no one's consent was violated.
Choosing a few to die involuntarily (against their informed consent) is evil.
---
Interesting point on the nothing to do with free will.
My personal morality system reflects here. Essentially, if a rational (not drugged, drunk, or obviously insane) individual gives informed, uncoerced consent, then the act isn't evil. If they are not informed, or irrational, or coerced then it's evil even if they said yes if they would have said no otherwise. And if they don't get a choice but they would have said no, it's also evil.
So what I'm saying is that Utilitarianism allows legitimately violating the informed consent of one or a few by the larger number of people if has a good argument that they will benefit. "The two of us will die, but if we kill you, we will live. By Utilitarianism, we have the right to kill you to save ourselves."
How so? They seem like an individual right and in many cases, an individual with property rights thwarts the desire of a larger group to put up a hotel or ski lodge, drill for oil, etc.
(seriously interested- what's the utilitarian argument for property rights?)
In a trivial example, in any case where a larger (2+) group of people I care about will die and i can stop it by sacrificing myself to save them, their needs outweigh my needs. This could be my family, my friends, a bunch of children, a bunch of women (I'm just old fashioned I guess-even if they were lesbians- can't help myself), etc., etc.
So you agree, in principle that you have no rights and no basis to argue against any decision by others.
No-- choosing a subset who dies is evil.
If you can engage people's free will, then it's not evil.
Examples, if we say, "We need three volunteers to die so everyone else can make it" and you get three volunteers, then you were not evil.
If you don't ask, but three people volunteer, also not evil.
And finally, if some subset up to 100% agree to die based on a lottery- then three die as a result of the lottery, it's not evil.
---
We have to disagree on free will. You are wrong, but you can't see it. But hey, that's your free will in action so I can't stop it.
--- I tend to agree with you on the property rights thing. Property rights are good but exceptions develop. Taking a person's property isn't the same as killing them. However, if you want a stable society, you should have some kind of property rights.
However, property rights are not a natural right like "the natural right to pursue property" or "the natural right to think however you like". A natural right can't be granted by the government and it can't be taken away by the government.
I wish we had two words- one for natural rights and one for agreed upon rights.
---
Utilitarianism eliminates respect for the individual. It allows any group to do anything to any one. It is anti-golden rule. (and by that i mean, treat others as they wish to be treated as long as it doesn't violate how you wish to be treated or to act).
---
Our rights are a balance between negotiated rights (really tyranny of the majority) and natural rights (which can't be taken away except by killing you or (some) by imprisoning you (maybe- it's very hard to take away your right to pursue happiness. You can find happiness just about anywhere under any conditions)).
In general we set certain limits to protect ourselves as well. We grant rights because we want those rights ourselves.
--- You may be speaking a bit more philosophically than me in the end tho. I'm an old fart and tend to be pragmatic about such things.
While as a Trekky, I like the reference. I hope that they referenced utilitarianism in the article and I hope that they recognize utilitarianism can be used to justify evil things including letting a few starve so everyone else can live. This may be realistic but its evil unless you are acting as spock and *SACRIFICING YOURSELF* to be one of the few helping the rest. If the rest are choosing you to die against your will, it's evil.
Utilitarianism negates free will, property rights and individuality when misapplied (and perhaps when correctly applied too).
Many companies in the US regularly work their salaried employees at rates which hard the health and result in accidental deaths of their employees.
Human life won't always be cheap there. Things are evening out between the nations. We'll stagnate or even drift down in the west until things are equal. Since we don't have true freedom in the west any more, our competitive advantages have been lost. The corporations are mostly in control but even there at any point the laws could turn against them. As we lose the rule of law, the safety that rule of law brought is lost.
I'm not sure if there is a list. it's apparently common in florida. My company does not allow smoking on the premises and 5 years ago would not hire new smokers if they were dumb enough to admit it (or smelled of smoke I guess).
Except that things which were perfectly okay 10 years ago are often no longer acceptable today. You don't even do these things any more-- but you get graded as if you did.
Say you are in a picture smoking a cigarette- a lot of companies will fire you today because of that. Even if it was just a stunt puff.
You may be in a conservative area and now be a conservative but get graded because you were once liberal - and vice versa.
You may have been mildly drunk or mildly angry.
It's like the difference between policemen and automated traffic enforcement. If they really seriously start automatically enforcing all traffic laws automatically, you'd be violating the laws a dozen times a day. It would cost you $1200 a day to drive and everyone would lose their licenses quite rapidly. Do you signal every lane change? Sure you always get your headlights on quickly enough at dusk? Did you exit at 35mph? Even tho the feeder is 50mph and the freeway is 60mph (seriously- what the hell are they thinking putting a 35mph speed just for the exit??? between two faster flows of traffic).
I'm all for the hypocrisy being exposed (I'm against drinking for the public! But here's a picture of me in my private club drinking). But the only rational response long term to 24 hour surveillance is to ignore it.
I'm sure since I'm a bachelor and date that this will cause some snooping females to think differently-- even tho I'm up front that I'm a bachelor.
The show focuses on the planets. But from the recent episodes we know large sections have some level of life support. They were shown to be pressurized but with limited oxygen.
For me, what would have really ruined B5 was if it boiled down to the superevil badass race turning out to be overgrown teenagers afraid to move out on their own so they are beating up on the 5 year olds. That would have been so pathetic I might have blocked it out of my memory and never watched another episode again.
However, my group is mostly leeches. Only two people out of 31 seem to be spending hard cash. the rest of us use it to connect and leave the epenis out of it.
I felt even worse about B5-- another series "with a plan". it's too bad it was canceled and they never made season 5, or even the last episode of season 4. It was a great series. I would have hate to have had it have a terribly cheesy ending.
Some things, like the Matrix And Star Wars are better just to stop while you are ahead and not go on to ruin the concept with further movies. I've always thought the brothers were wise to stop the Matrix at the first episode and even tho I didn't like much of Return of the Jedi, I'm glad that Lucas stopped there rather than go on to make some cheesy effects laden movies with terrible acting and direction, undercut the Force, and generally ruin the entire series.
--- Anyway... on Caprica. Didn't like it. The story was *done*. And I liked the ending. I liked BSG. I didn't like Caprica. It was a show for young people. I'm nearing 50. It had nothing that appealed to me. It was like a completely different random show that they tacked on the BSG franchies to.
Now-- Stargate Universe- I'm liking so far. There are some dumb things (like why they are not training the doctor during some of her at home time- but at least they addressed that by bringing in specialists). seems like they should be working on a forge and a machine shop too. And at some points the guns have got to start breaking and running out of ammunition. They should find/use some energy weapons.
Tho even 10,000 years is said to be enough to evolve a mouse into an elephant sized creature given the right pressures, a hundred million years is such a long period it is difficult for the mind to conceive.
Once the government started providing money for collage, heheheh, it started a process of extracting as much government money as possible.
Given a college of funding sources, the university decided not to maximize learning but to maximize income.
It's reached a point where some students take a decade or more to "break even" on the cost of their collage despite a higher income. Basically the university is tapping the student's future income.
Now that student debts can't be forgiven (even by bankruptcy) the students are being forced to serve as wage slaves even if their collage degree doesn't result in a job.
It's damned immoral and we are destroying the future of our country.
The same education overseas is under 20% of the cost in most cases (under 10% in many). So our competitors don't need to make as much money (to pay back those debts) so they are able to work for low wages and take us to the cleaners.
Slashdot Mirror
That's bullshit. Someone who blows up teenagers is a terrorist. Doesn't matter if they are on my side or your side.
Unless your ethical system allows murder, torture, rape, genocide, mass murder, organ-legging, there are lines at which "freedom fighter" stops.
Per the WIki,
After doing some investigation on the ship's computer, he discovers that former Governor Kodos had ordered the executions of more than half Tarsus IV's population after the food supply was all but destroyed by a fungus. He also uncovers evidence that Kodos applied his own personal theories of eugenics when he chose who lived or died. Furthermore, the vital resupply ships that could have saved the whole colony arrived much sooner than Kodos had anticipated rendering all the executions unnecessary.
---
He ordered half of the population involuntarily killed based on his personal preferences. Think of that in earth terms, 3 billion people murdered.
The timing of the arrival of the resupply ship arrival doesn't matter. Even if they'd arrived when the population was down to 1 billion from subsequent starvation, the initial murder of 3 billion people would have been evil.
That is just an awesome example!
Wish you hadn't posted anonymously.
Yes, he was evil. And he was presented as evil and full of remorse.
The only exit for him was suicide.
I could see either volunteering to kill yourself or taking the evil/harsh route and killing the 10% that needed to be killed to save everyone and then killing yourself.
Killing everyone and then living on-- pretty much pure evil.
The only case where an exception is made is in the military where you understand in advance that your officers may have to make orders like that. Since you "sort of consented in advance" it's acceptable unless the commander is being careless.
To some degree, we the citizens by voting and continuing to reside in our countries may "sort of consent in advance" to our civilian authorities making hard choices like this as well. But we tend to bust their asses for it afterwards unless they handle it perfectly.
Choosing to let everyone starve is the good choice if all decide to starve and none decide to sacrifice themselves. That the entire group dies isn't an evil event since no one's consent was violated.
Choosing a few to die involuntarily (against their informed consent) is evil.
---
Interesting point on the nothing to do with free will.
My personal morality system reflects here. Essentially, if a rational (not drugged, drunk, or obviously insane) individual gives informed, uncoerced consent, then the act isn't evil. If they are not informed, or irrational, or coerced then it's evil even if they said yes if they would have said no otherwise. And if they don't get a choice but they would have said no, it's also evil.
So what I'm saying is that Utilitarianism allows legitimately violating the informed consent of one or a few by the larger number of people if has a good argument that they will benefit. "The two of us will die, but if we kill you, we will live. By Utilitarianism, we have the right to kill you to save ourselves."
How so? They seem like an individual right and in many cases, an individual with property rights thwarts the desire of a larger group to put up a hotel or ski lodge, drill for oil, etc.
(seriously interested- what's the utilitarian argument for property rights?)
In a trivial example, in any case where a larger (2+) group of people I care about will die and i can stop it by sacrificing myself to save them, their needs outweigh my needs. This could be my family, my friends, a bunch of children, a bunch of women (I'm just old fashioned I guess-even if they were lesbians- can't help myself), etc., etc.
So you agree, in principle that you have no rights and no basis to argue against any decision by others.
No-- choosing a subset who dies is evil.
If you can engage people's free will, then it's not evil.
Examples, if we say, "We need three volunteers to die so everyone else can make it" and you get three volunteers, then you were not evil.
If you don't ask, but three people volunteer, also not evil.
And finally, if some subset up to 100% agree to die based on a lottery- then three die as a result of the lottery, it's not evil.
---
We have to disagree on free will. You are wrong, but you can't see it. But hey, that's your free will in action so I can't stop it.
---
I tend to agree with you on the property rights thing. Property rights are good but exceptions develop. Taking a person's property isn't the same as killing them. However, if you want a stable society, you should have some kind of property rights.
However, property rights are not a natural right like "the natural right to pursue property" or "the natural right to think however you like". A natural right can't be granted by the government and it can't be taken away by the government.
I wish we had two words- one for natural rights and one for agreed upon rights.
---
Utilitarianism eliminates respect for the individual. It allows any group to do anything to any one. It is anti-golden rule. (and by that i mean, treat others as they wish to be treated as long as it doesn't violate how you wish to be treated or to act).
---
Our rights are a balance between negotiated rights (really tyranny of the majority) and natural rights (which can't be taken away except by killing you or (some) by imprisoning you (maybe- it's very hard to take away your right to pursue happiness. You can find happiness just about anywhere under any conditions)).
In general we set certain limits to protect ourselves as well. We grant rights because we want those rights ourselves.
---
You may be speaking a bit more philosophically than me in the end tho. I'm an old fart and tend to be pragmatic about such things.
Well, say the majority decide that we need to kill people who post anonymously to protect ourselves from terrorists.
We track down your IP and kill everyone associated with it. Because, our needs outweigh your needs.
I just makes sense. You're right, I don't see why this would be evil.
While as a Trekky, I like the reference. I hope that they referenced utilitarianism in the article and I hope that they recognize utilitarianism can be used to justify evil things including letting a few starve so everyone else can live. This may be realistic but its evil unless you are acting as spock and *SACRIFICING YOURSELF* to be one of the few helping the rest. If the rest are choosing you to die against your will, it's evil.
Utilitarianism negates free will, property rights and individuality when misapplied (and perhaps when correctly applied too).
Many companies in the US regularly work their salaried employees at rates which hard the health and result in accidental deaths of their employees.
Human life won't always be cheap there. Things are evening out between the nations. We'll stagnate or even drift down in the west until things are equal. Since we don't have true freedom in the west any more, our competitive advantages have been lost.
The corporations are mostly in control but even there at any point the laws could turn against them. As we lose the rule of law, the safety that rule of law brought is lost.
I'm not sure if there is a list. it's apparently common in florida. My company does not allow smoking on the premises and 5 years ago would not hire new smokers if they were dumb enough to admit it (or smelled of smoke I guess).
It's common enough tho...
http://digg.com/news/lifestyle/Employees_getting_fired_for_smoking_or_being_obese
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/42755
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/10/28/60minutes/main990617.shtml
http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/9959391/detail.html
http://businessshrink.biz/psychologyofbusiness/2007/09/27/employees-fired-and-fined-for-smoking-obesity-and-blood-test-results/
Just google "fired for smoking".
Except that things which were perfectly okay 10 years ago are often no longer acceptable today. You don't even do these things any more-- but you get graded as if you did.
Say you are in a picture smoking a cigarette- a lot of companies will fire you today because of that. Even if it was just a stunt puff.
You may be in a conservative area and now be a conservative but get graded because you were once liberal - and vice versa.
You may have been mildly drunk or mildly angry.
It's like the difference between policemen and automated traffic enforcement. If they really seriously start automatically enforcing all traffic laws automatically, you'd be violating the laws a dozen times a day. It would cost you $1200 a day to drive and everyone would lose their licenses quite rapidly. Do you signal every lane change? Sure you always get your headlights on quickly enough at dusk? Did you exit at 35mph? Even tho the feeder is 50mph and the freeway is 60mph (seriously- what the hell are they thinking putting a 35mph speed just for the exit??? between two faster flows of traffic).
I'm all for the hypocrisy being exposed (I'm against drinking for the public! But here's a picture of me in my private club drinking). But the only rational response long term to 24 hour surveillance is to ignore it.
I'm sure since I'm a bachelor and date that this will cause some snooping females to think differently-- even tho I'm up front that I'm a bachelor.
I think Glen has a point.
The show focuses on the planets. But from the recent episodes we know large sections have some level of life support. They were shown to be pressurized but with limited oxygen.
Good point!
For me, what would have really ruined B5 was if it boiled down to the superevil badass race turning out to be overgrown teenagers afraid to move out on their own so they are beating up on the 5 year olds. That would have been so pathetic I might have blocked it out of my memory and never watched another episode again.
Most of my co-farmville players are female.
However, my group is mostly leeches. Only two people out of 31 seem to be spending hard cash. the rest of us use it to connect and leave the epenis out of it.
All my buds have androids and given a choice, I'd be on an android.
The HTC wasn't approved until (literally) ONE FRIKKIN DAY after they put the iphone in my hand (after a 13 week approval process).
My next personal phone may be an android but I may also move everything over to the iphone and reduce my personal phone to the minimum plan.
I felt even worse about B5-- another series "with a plan". it's too bad it was canceled and they never made season 5, or even the last episode of season 4. It was a great series. I would have hate to have had it have a terribly cheesy ending.
Some things, like the Matrix And Star Wars are better just to stop while you are ahead and not go on to ruin the concept with further movies. I've always thought the brothers were wise to stop the Matrix at the first episode and even tho I didn't like much of Return of the Jedi, I'm glad that Lucas stopped there rather than go on to make some cheesy effects laden movies with terrible acting and direction, undercut the Force, and generally ruin the entire series.
---
Anyway... on Caprica. Didn't like it. The story was *done*. And I liked the ending. I liked BSG. I didn't like Caprica. It was a show for young people. I'm nearing 50. It had nothing that appealed to me. It was like a completely different random show that they tacked on the BSG franchies to.
Now-- Stargate Universe- I'm liking so far. There are some dumb things (like why they are not training the doctor during some of her at home time- but at least they addressed that by bringing in specialists). seems like they should be working on a forge and a machine shop too. And at some points the guns have got to start breaking and running out of ammunition. They should find/use some energy weapons.
MSFT was down 17% in 2009 tho.
So do you think the new profits are long term or a bump like apples? Will they drop back to 14 bill or was that a bad year/glitch?
I must admit that I now have an iPhone and that's the first apple product I've had since the Apple II.
If Android continues to make inroads into iPhone territory tho it could hurt Apple's bottom line.
that's the difference between a manager and a lead.
the manager is handed crap and breaks it into blobs and gives it to leads.
the lead takes the blob and breaks it into action items.
The line worker takes their action item and does them.
Lately business has decided it doesn't really need managers or leads.. with predictable results.
For the year 2009 Apple had a net income (profit) of $8.24 billion.
For the year 2009, Microsoft profit fell to $14.57 billion
So microsoft makes more money, but the downward trend started in 2009.
Don't loose your cool man.
I doesn't matter that much if they played fast and lose with the spelling.
And the lack of handicapping also.
Need to shove experts in with experts.
Cool!
Tho even 10,000 years is said to be enough to evolve a mouse into an elephant sized creature given the right pressures, a hundred million years is such a long period it is difficult for the mind to conceive.
get a 10 to 20 pound weight (it should feel light but tire you after 20-30 reps) and do forearm curls.
Don't overbend the wrist.
Part of your issue may be tendonitis in your forearms (which these exercizes exhaust and release).
Also upright rowing (a lot of "wrist" issues are really shoulder/back issues) gain with medium weights (feels light- but tires you after 20-30 reps).
Once the government started providing money for collage, heheheh, it started a process of extracting as much government money as possible.
Given a college of funding sources, the university decided not to maximize learning but to maximize income.
It's reached a point where some students take a decade or more to "break even" on the cost of their collage despite a higher income. Basically the university is tapping the student's future income.
Now that student debts can't be forgiven (even by bankruptcy) the students are being forced to serve as wage slaves even if their collage degree doesn't result in a job.
It's damned immoral and we are destroying the future of our country.
The same education overseas is under 20% of the cost in most cases (under 10% in many). So our competitors don't need to make as much money (to pay back those debts) so they are able to work for low wages and take us to the cleaners.