If you want to be Lawful Good, then the first thing you need do is attempt to make sure that the Laws in question are indeed Good.
"Contempt for rules" ends up self-learned, I assure you, when the rules are not just stupid but downright evil. It's tyranny that ends up the best teacher of anarchy.
Nah, you just all caught me on a noob moment. I never had to use this fast user switching system you've all mentioned, so didn't know much about it (Outside rare occasions, I'm pretty much the only one who uses my home computer).
Hmm... let's test the coolness of this with the hypothetical scenario of my brother saying "hey, can I check something on the web for a sec"?
Different logins: - I save the files I'm working on, even ones that are clearly not meant to be saved yet. - I log out - He logs in. - He opens up the browser and does his work. - He logs back out - I log back in. - I reopen all my programs, reloading all the files I had saved.
Different browser profiles - I tell him "don't close up anything I have open". - He opens up the browser and does his work, after switching browser profiles. - I switch browser profiles back and continue my own work.
Somehow "different browser profiles" seems to me to be much simpler and work much faster (and thus be all around "cooler") than your own preferred hammer-beats-nail-into-submission solution.
My point was that "not being able to see a lot of stars" is extremely petty
Petty, compared to what? Compared to air-pollution and sound-pollution? Certainly -- that's why we have laws for those things already, and not yet for light-pollution.
But that it's of smaller significance that *those* things, doesn't make it a meaningless one to try to solve.
I agree, but the benefits of streetlights far, outweigh the downside of "waaah I can't see as many stars as people in 1850 could!"
The only one saying "waah" is you. As for the benefits of streetlights, I see worth in streetlights, but I also see room for improvement in them.
If astronomy is important to you, move somewhere where you can practice astronomy!
If the quality of life in MY CITY is important to me, I'll bloody well discuss about how to improve life in my CITY. And looking at the stars may not be as important as clean air and clean water, but its worth isn't zero either.
And simply use earplugs if your next-door neighbors have parties with deafening music 24/7?
And if people want to breathe they shouldn't care about keeping the air breathable, they should simply buy oxygen tanks for themselves and their children.
And if people want to drink clean water, they shouldn't make sure the city provides adequate piping infrastructure, they should just made do with water bottles.
And what's the problem with radioactive fallout? People should just buy and wear the appropriate suits.
You're not conversing, Blakey Rat. In fact you're not even saying anything. Things like streetlights are a public affair, and as such our "whims" on this matter are as valid as yours.
What if I impersonated a doctor and lied to you that you had a terminal disease that would cause you to suffer horrific pain before you died. And because of that you then commit suicide.
The fraud is a crucial part of this case I'd say. It's not just a person being mean. It's a person committing fraud with the explicit intent of hurting another.
I don't see why it's only fraud that's directed against your property that is punishable, and not fraud that's directed against your very life.
"The question is would a reasonable person expect a depressed girl to kill her self because of a fictional breakup?"
I guess that reasonable people have never heard of the concept of "suicide", ever. It's unimaginable to them that depressed people occasionally kill themselves.
The woman went out of her way to hurt a child. That child ended up being hurt, exactly as the woman intended.
Also, I'd ask you to question the proposition you just made - is it right to force someone to provide a good even if it means they incur a cost (loss) to do so?
No, nobody should force them to provide anything -- but if they don't do so, they should lose the exclusive rights to so providing it: either by selling these rights to someone who *will* be able to provide it or by simply making the whole thing public domain so that *anyone* can.
As I said, I don't recognize anyone's right to take a thing out of circulation altogether because of "copyright". Even if we accept monopoly, deprivation is one thing further yet.
In my own country some companies that supposedly have the right to subtitle several TV series shut down some fan-subtitle sites. Even when these companies haven't actually subtitled the series in question, they supposedly hold the exclusive right to do so. And so they try to stop fans' efforts to provide the service even when the companies don't actually provide the service themselves.
I don't believe they have the moral right, even if the law is on their side.
Least moral option is buying the print version for the simple reason that it's a waste of earth's resources: Lots of the cost of the print version is about aspects of the book you don't actually need or want -- its paper, its actual printing, its distribution and packaging. Wasteful.
The ideal moral solution is if the company allowed you to buy an e-text version of the book for a reduced price (a price that excluded all the aspects you don't need or want)
Next in line is if you download the pirated version for free. That has the advantage of benefitting you AND not rewarding the evil company who's trying to cheat you of your money. Unfortunately it doesn't reward the original authors.
Least moral solution is if you encourage all the waste in resources and wealth by giving money for a wasteful print version that doesn't actually satisfy you. Bad for you, bad for the planet. Save your labor-earned money for something you actually want to have, not something that they're guilting you into having but you don't really want.
Actually it's the most fundamental rule of ethics there is, I'd say.
"The copyright holder is completely within its rights to withhold the work from the world until the copyright term expires."
No. I can potentially recognize some values in monopolies, but I don't recognize value in enforced deprivations. If these copyright holders hold the exclusive right to provide a certain good (aka the copyright) then I consider them simultaneously obliged to actually provide it.
People always have the "ability" to achieve no matter what the government does since prehistorical times, what sort of "promotion of the general welfare" would you actually consider constitutional?
Strangely enough "promote the general Welfare" doesn't limit this promotion to the things you want it strictly limited to. To argue that social security or "socialized medicine" isn't mentioned is like arguing that the airforce isn't explicitly mentioned.
And also, though "common defense" is explicitly mentioned, the "common attack" that America has been waging in Iraq isn't.
If you want to talk about the things explicitly mentioned, that is.
The constitution says in its preamble "in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity"
Common defense is only one of six things the government is supposed to do.
- You don't have a soul! - Yes, I do. I define my soul as my self-awareness, I therefore do have one. - We're not convinced you're self-aware! Nothing you say can prove it. - Thankfully I don't need to prove it or convince you. I was merely explaining as a courtesy why *I* am not convinced by *you*. Now if you aren't convinced of the existence of your own self-awareness, then I can potentially accept that *you* don't have souls.
Alzheimer's is proof by counterexample that souls don't exist... Her "soul" died piece by piece before my family's eyes, leaving first a wild animal with the power of speech (in the form of babble), and then only an empty husk of a body. The "soul" is divisible, and physical disease can kill it piecemeal by attacking the brain. Therefore, the "soul" is a physical part of the brain.
That's an emotional positioning that doesn't make any logical sense. If you say that the soul is killable or divisible or a physical part of the brain, then you've already agreed that it exists, and are merely disagreeing about its properties. And yet you say that it doesn't exist.
Emotionally I understand what you're getting at: that physical causes can affect the personality, and therefore it causes one to be cynical to believe that the personality resides in some "non-physical" soul.
I almost completely agree with you on that: I don't believe that souls, even if they exist, would have much of anything to do with personalities. Personalities are just another layer of physicality.
But I'm nonetheless self-aware. And there's nothing I've read about computation that explains this self-awareness to me. That the personality I am aware of is dependent on my physical brain doesn't explain the fact that I AM aware of it.
Utter nonsense. MLK wasn't even referring to racism when he said these words: he was referring to Vietnam and America acting as "the policeman of the world".
Here's the context: Don't let anybody make you think God chose America as his divine messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with justice and it seems I can hear God saying to America "you are too arrogant, and if you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I will place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name."
Do you think that MLK living today wouldn't speak the exact same words about Iraq as he spoke back then about Vietnam?
Yeah, MLK didn't say that God will damn America, MLK merely said that if America doesn't changes its ways then God will rise up and break the backbone of America's power, and will place in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know God's name.
Wait a sec, that sounds exactly like God damning America... True, MLK was much more eloquent than Wright was in describing the exact way that God will damn America.
"In case you haven't figured out, I pretty heavily in the mix of nature & nurture camp"
And yet you mocked the idea of those two ideas existing together. So much for internal consistency in your ramble.
For what little it counts, I believe in both "(a) "Homosexuals are born that way" and (b) "Homosexuality is a personal lifestyle choice; and who are you to question that choice"
-- like you say it's a combination of nature and nurture, like pretty much EVERYTHING is -- and I don't see how these ideas are contradictory or "doublethink". If they were "competing", then they were wrongly so: they had no reason competing, they ought be complementing each other.
And seemingly neither do you consider them contradictory or doublethink because you pretty much claimed the same thing when you said you favour a mix of nature & nurture.
Do you think she really needs the extra money?
I think this is even simpler than money -- it's the mere irksomeness of seeing other people doing something with something of her own that she doesn't approve of, for reasons she doesn't approve of. It's what had her prevent WB from gaining rights on her characters themselves -- what made her prevent the screenwriters of the 6th movie from presenting Dumbledore as straight. It's consistent with her character.
The money thing is, I guess, merely the justification that a court can understand, given how "violating my creative pride" is probably not something a court is allowed to punish.
I wish JKR well, I think she's on the right here.
"Do you see the C.S. Lewis estate suing folks who write books about the Narnia series?"
The difference between "estates" and original authors morally dilutes the issue IMO.
The "estate" are themselves secondary people benefitting from the original author's work. In my opinion, the original author has a greater moral right to restricting things than his mere legal heirs.
JKR helped the hp-lexicon people. The HP lexicon owes everything to her work. Then the hp-lexicon people disrespect her wishes -- not her *estate's* wishes, but her own wishes. Let them burn in hell.
I've read Dunsany already - but I didn't like him. Perhaps the problem was the translation (I only read a Greek translation of Dunsany, while I've read Tolkien in both English and in Greek) -- but either way it was the imagery and words of Tolkien that stuck to mind, and Dunsany's not.
From what I remember of what I thought of Dunsany was that he was too abstract and unorganized for my tastes. Tolkien was about the specifics; the specifics that mattered.
Slashdot Mirror
"Also, I seem to remember hearing how much the Thai love their king."
It seems that it's illegal not to love him. So what choice do the Thai people have on the matter?
...Of mithril and of elven-glass
With shining prow; no shaven oar
Nor sail she bore on silver mast...
If you want to be Lawful Good, then the first thing you need do is attempt to make sure that the Laws in question are indeed Good.
"Contempt for rules" ends up self-learned, I assure you, when the rules are not just stupid but downright evil. It's tyranny that ends up the best teacher of anarchy.
Nah, you just all caught me on a noob moment. I never had to use this fast user switching system you've all mentioned, so didn't know much about it (Outside rare occasions, I'm pretty much the only one who uses my home computer).
Hmm... let's test the coolness of this with the hypothetical scenario of my brother saying "hey, can I check something on the web for a sec"?
Different logins:
- I save the files I'm working on, even ones that are clearly not meant to be saved yet.
- I log out
- He logs in.
- He opens up the browser and does his work.
- He logs back out
- I log back in.
- I reopen all my programs, reloading all the files I had saved.
Different browser profiles
- I tell him "don't close up anything I have open".
- He opens up the browser and does his work, after switching browser profiles.
- I switch browser profiles back and continue my own work.
Somehow "different browser profiles" seems to me to be much simpler and work much faster (and thus be all around "cooler") than your own preferred hammer-beats-nail-into-submission solution.
My point was that "not being able to see a lot of stars" is extremely petty
Petty, compared to what? Compared to air-pollution and sound-pollution? Certainly -- that's why we have laws for those things already, and not yet for light-pollution.
But that it's of smaller significance that *those* things, doesn't make it a meaningless one to try to solve.
I agree, but the benefits of streetlights far, outweigh the downside of "waaah I can't see as many stars as people in 1850 could!"
The only one saying "waah" is you. As for the benefits of streetlights, I see worth in streetlights, but I also see room for improvement in them.
If astronomy is important to you, move somewhere where you can practice astronomy!
If the quality of life in MY CITY is important to me, I'll bloody well discuss about how to improve life in my CITY. And looking at the stars may not be as important as clean air and clean water, but its worth isn't zero either.
And simply use earplugs if your next-door neighbors have parties with deafening music 24/7?
And if people want to breathe they shouldn't care about keeping the air breathable, they should simply buy oxygen tanks for themselves and their children.
And if people want to drink clean water, they shouldn't make sure the city provides adequate piping infrastructure, they should just made do with water bottles.
And what's the problem with radioactive fallout? People should just buy and wear the appropriate suits.
You're not conversing, Blakey Rat. In fact you're not even saying anything. Things like streetlights are a public affair, and as such our "whims" on this matter are as valid as yours.
Except, you know, coherent.
"For a start, I don't think "impersonate" means what you think it means"
tr.v., -atÂed, -atÂing, -ates.
1. To assume the character or appearance of, especially fraudulently
"Thirdly, anyone who commits suicide, for whatever reason, is responsible for their own suicide"
Yes, ofcourse they are. But if fraudulent information maliciously led them to it, they're not the sole people responsible.
"I don't see how you can argue otherwise."
I'm not arguing that the girl wasn't responsible. She certainly was. It's you who's arguing that the malicious fraud wasn't.
Strangely enough in this world of multiple causes and multiple effects, more than one people can be responsible for the same thing.
I don't see why I should argue that the girl wasn't responsible for her suicide, in order to argue that the fraud was also. I believe they both were.
What if I impersonated a doctor and lied to you that you had a terminal disease that would cause you to suffer horrific pain before you died. And because of that you then commit suicide.
The fraud is a crucial part of this case I'd say. It's not just a person being mean. It's a person committing fraud with the explicit intent of hurting another.
I don't see why it's only fraud that's directed against your property that is punishable, and not fraud that's directed against your very life.
Being mean may not be a crime, but committing fraud in order to hurt a person should be.
"The question is would a reasonable person expect a depressed girl to kill her self because of a fictional breakup?"
I guess that reasonable people have never heard of the concept of "suicide", ever. It's unimaginable to them that depressed people occasionally kill themselves.
The woman went out of her way to hurt a child. That child ended up being hurt, exactly as the woman intended.
I don't see where the moral ambiguity lies here.
That is a valid position. It just isn't the law.
I understand that.
Also, I'd ask you to question the proposition you just made - is it right to force someone to provide a good even if it means they incur a cost (loss) to do so?
No, nobody should force them to provide anything -- but if they don't do so, they should lose the exclusive rights to so providing it: either by selling these rights to someone who *will* be able to provide it or by simply making the whole thing public domain so that *anyone* can.
As I said, I don't recognize anyone's right to take a thing out of circulation altogether because of "copyright". Even if we accept monopoly, deprivation is one thing further yet.
In my own country some companies that supposedly have the right to subtitle several TV series shut down some fan-subtitle sites. Even when these companies haven't actually subtitled the series in question, they supposedly hold the exclusive right to do so. And so they try to stop fans' efforts to provide the service even when the companies don't actually provide the service themselves.
I don't believe they have the moral right, even if the law is on their side.
Least moral option is buying the print version for the simple reason that it's a waste of earth's resources: Lots of the cost of the print version is about aspects of the book you don't actually need or want -- its paper, its actual printing, its distribution and packaging. Wasteful.
The ideal moral solution is if the company allowed you to buy an e-text version of the book for a reduced price (a price that excluded all the aspects you don't need or want)
Next in line is if you download the pirated version for free. That has the advantage of benefitting you AND not rewarding the evil company who's trying to cheat you of your money. Unfortunately it doesn't reward the original authors.
Least moral solution is if you encourage all the waste in resources and wealth by giving money for a wasteful print version that doesn't actually satisfy you. Bad for you, bad for the planet. Save your labor-earned money for something you actually want to have, not something that they're guilting you into having but you don't really want.
"No harm-no foul is not a rule of ethics."
Actually it's the most fundamental rule of ethics there is, I'd say.
"The copyright holder is completely within its rights to withhold the work from the world until the copyright term expires."
No. I can potentially recognize some values in monopolies, but I don't recognize value in enforced deprivations. If these copyright holders hold the exclusive right to provide a certain good (aka the copyright) then I consider them simultaneously obliged to actually provide it.
People always have the "ability" to achieve no matter what the government does since prehistorical times, what sort of "promotion of the general welfare" would you actually consider constitutional?
Strangely enough "promote the general Welfare" doesn't limit this promotion to the things you want it strictly limited to. To argue that social security or "socialized medicine" isn't mentioned is like arguing that the airforce isn't explicitly mentioned.
And also, though "common defense" is explicitly mentioned, the "common attack" that America has been waging in Iraq isn't.
If you want to talk about the things explicitly mentioned, that is.
*The* one thing?
The constitution says in its preamble "in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity"
Common defense is only one of six things the government is supposed to do.
- You don't have a soul!
- Yes, I do. I define my soul as my self-awareness, I therefore do have one.
- We're not convinced you're self-aware! Nothing you say can prove it.
- Thankfully I don't need to prove it or convince you. I was merely explaining as a courtesy why *I* am not convinced by *you*. Now if you aren't convinced of the existence of your own self-awareness, then I can potentially accept that *you* don't have souls.
Alzheimer's is proof by counterexample that souls don't exist ...
Her "soul" died piece by piece before my family's eyes, leaving first a wild animal with the power of speech (in the form of babble), and then only an empty husk of a body. The "soul" is divisible, and physical disease can kill it piecemeal by attacking the brain. Therefore, the "soul" is a physical part of the brain.
That's an emotional positioning that doesn't make any logical sense. If you say that the soul is killable or divisible or a physical part of the brain, then you've already agreed that it exists, and are merely disagreeing about its properties. And yet you say that it doesn't exist.
Emotionally I understand what you're getting at: that physical causes can affect the personality, and therefore it causes one to be cynical to believe that the personality resides in some "non-physical" soul.
I almost completely agree with you on that: I don't believe that souls, even if they exist, would have much of anything to do with personalities. Personalities are just another layer of physicality.
But I'm nonetheless self-aware. And there's nothing I've read about computation that explains this self-awareness to me. That the personality I am aware of is dependent on my physical brain doesn't explain the fact that I AM aware of it.
Utter nonsense. MLK wasn't even referring to racism when he said these words: he was referring to Vietnam and America acting as "the policeman of the world".
Here's the context:
Don't let anybody make you think God chose America as his divine messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with justice and it seems I can hear God saying to America "you are too arrogant, and if you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I will place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name."
Do you think that MLK living today wouldn't speak the exact same words about Iraq as he spoke back then about Vietnam?
Yeah, MLK didn't say that God will damn America, MLK merely said that if America doesn't changes its ways then God will rise up and break the backbone of America's power, and will place in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know God's name.
Wait a sec, that sounds exactly like God damning America... True, MLK was much more eloquent than Wright was in describing the exact way that God will damn America.
"In case you haven't figured out, I pretty heavily in the mix of nature & nurture camp" And yet you mocked the idea of those two ideas existing together. So much for internal consistency in your ramble. For what little it counts, I believe in both "(a) "Homosexuals are born that way" and (b) "Homosexuality is a personal lifestyle choice; and who are you to question that choice" -- like you say it's a combination of nature and nurture, like pretty much EVERYTHING is -- and I don't see how these ideas are contradictory or "doublethink". If they were "competing", then they were wrongly so: they had no reason competing, they ought be complementing each other. And seemingly neither do you consider them contradictory or doublethink because you pretty much claimed the same thing when you said you favour a mix of nature & nurture.
This is probably a stupid question on my part no doubt, but why would we want cars to be made of harder materials than they are already?
Wouldn't a safer car be one that's so soft that even if it hits you it's like a pillow hitting you? Meaning the least hard possible is preferable?
Do you think she really needs the extra money? I think this is even simpler than money -- it's the mere irksomeness of seeing other people doing something with something of her own that she doesn't approve of, for reasons she doesn't approve of. It's what had her prevent WB from gaining rights on her characters themselves -- what made her prevent the screenwriters of the 6th movie from presenting Dumbledore as straight. It's consistent with her character. The money thing is, I guess, merely the justification that a court can understand, given how "violating my creative pride" is probably not something a court is allowed to punish. I wish JKR well, I think she's on the right here.
"Do you see the C.S. Lewis estate suing folks who write books about the Narnia series?" The difference between "estates" and original authors morally dilutes the issue IMO. The "estate" are themselves secondary people benefitting from the original author's work. In my opinion, the original author has a greater moral right to restricting things than his mere legal heirs. JKR helped the hp-lexicon people. The HP lexicon owes everything to her work. Then the hp-lexicon people disrespect her wishes -- not her *estate's* wishes, but her own wishes. Let them burn in hell.
I've read Dunsany already - but I didn't like him. Perhaps the problem was the translation (I only read a Greek translation of Dunsany, while I've read Tolkien in both English and in Greek) -- but either way it was the imagery and words of Tolkien that stuck to mind, and Dunsany's not. From what I remember of what I thought of Dunsany was that he was too abstract and unorganized for my tastes. Tolkien was about the specifics; the specifics that mattered.