don't collect (and keep and share and sell) crap just because you can - show some backbone and leadership and collect as little as is necessary to serve your customer.
You make it sound so easy.
How, exactly, would you define "serving their customers"? Microsoft (or any other company for that matter) may define "service" as providing a product and making sure that people are satisfied. By that reasoning, it's necessary for Microsoft to take surveys from their customers, and possibly log their names/IP addresses to make sure that no-one over-represents any one problem (OK, I'm stretching it here). They may also consider entertainment giants as their customers (remember this, or this?), and therefore feel that providing the private information of pirates to them, or something like that, is necessary to serve their customers.
I don't want to start a flamewar. I just wanted to say that things are more complicated than that.
The issue runs deeper than that. Our entire society is based around the concept of reducing the impact of evolution on the human race. We vaccinate, we heal, we council. We protect people, but this takes its toll in the form of wussiness. I'm still trying to figure out where to draw the line between protection and survival of the fittest. Certainly the latter is easier, since it's all natural.
To amend your statement: Thank you, opportunistic lawyers, wussy judges, and uninformed juries of America for creating a sue-me state that makes a simple game of tag a serious legal liability.
Whoops, you got some words outta order there. Here, let me help you.
To amend your statement: Thank you, opportunistic lawyers, wussy judges, and uninformed juries of America for creating a sue-me state that makes a simple legal liability into a serious game of tag.
Let me take the time to say that everything has effects on other things. Period. It's obvious that a generation not so gradually increasing their television viewing will have effects, the question is what and whether we will put up with it. The parent post is probably right to an extent. Television interferes with our ability to communicate, but it probably increases creativity, due to the constant exposure to fiction (a topic for a different thread). Just like how autism isn't all bad. I mean, you do have intelligence, and lots of it.
So yeah, TV will change society. Do you really think we attained perfection before the invention of the TV?
There appears to be two different issues here. Yes my morals and values are the creation of my individual mind, but in what way should/does that restrict my ability to make judegments and take actions, and try to enforce my values on the world? I don't see the necessary link between the two.
You're right. I originally replied to a post talking about moral relativism, and how it's useless if it causes you not to act. Since I believe that it's wiser not to act, I responded by both defending moral relativism and the decision not to act based upon it. In truth, they really don't have anything necessarily to do with each other.
Saying that things are neither better or worse, just different, is itself a product of your own personal and limited mind/brain/views and thus can appear to fall into a contradiction. It's similar to saying "Everything is relative, this I know to be absolute." You seem to believe that the view that "nothing is better or worse, just different." is itself a better view than the alternative.
I don't believe that moral relativism is a moral matter, rather a scientific matter. We know, for example, that people, like other animals, will always act based upon what satisfies them. Other people's happiness will not directly make us happy. Have we seen any evidence of any moralistic tendencies that are hard coded into our biology? No, for the most part, we haven't. So, therefore, everything else in our constantly changing and adapting brain is up for grabs.
The one exception to that last question is the protection of children, which is something that we biologically are destined to do. However, this is becoming increasingly irrelevant, with human abominations such as corporations: i.e. flexible morals without biological constraints. We, as a society, are becoming separated from our morals through this process. So you might say that the one absolute moral that we have is now becoming relative.
I don't have a big enough army?:) Averaged over the centuries, long term progress has been made by humans, for exapmle technological progress, life expectancy and such. Maybe part of the problem is that many things are not undertaken with a scientific method, such as religion and so forth, there is no interest in perfecting certain things through experiment, result, and then deriving the underlying laws. The constant flow of time and the unkown future mean that a final valuation is not possible, we can only judge the value of things as they exist in the present, because tomorrow it might all be wiped out by an asteroid(which we could have avoided if we diverted millions of dollars from social security to instead developing anti-asteroid technology).
I believe the reason why we can't stabilise the world is that morals can't possibly fulfill everyone's needs all the time (or for that matter, most of the time). If we had attained moral perfection, then we would have no crime, no dissent, no war. The mere fact that this has not happened makes me feel that morals are not absolute.
I can believe the bits about passenger flow and efficiency, but what security is this supposed to add?
A scenario:
A guy is seen talking with about four other guys in front of the shopping district. Each are seen with guns. Security is notified and they check their RFID readers and cameras. They find them, send some agents in, and reel 'em in.
Assuming that they can iron out the problem of switching/taking off the collars, it could work to quickly take down threats. It at least has potential to fulfill its objectives. It's just a pity that these objectives don't include preserving privacy.
It's a matter of personal preference, I guess. In true moral relativism, it isn't a matter of one being preferred by another. I just personally believe in respecting their right for an individual/group/country to have their own belief system without interference. I believe that disrupting these events is pointless. After all, we won't end up any worse, just different. And in my personal opinion, spending resources on fixing what we perceive as other people's problems, we, and possibly they, will suffer.
But a lot of this is only my personal opinion and has little bearing on my views on moral relativity. I accept that I have my own views, and I accept that they don't apply necessarily to anyone else but me.
Often the odds appear to be that pursuing a particlar goal is more likely to lead to the desired outcome that not pursuing it.
In theory, we can predict everything perfectly, since everything is simply matter and energy behaving according to very rigid physics laws. But in practice, there is no way in hell that anyone is going to keep track of all the variables that govern what happens next. I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this.
When we do predict something accurately in terms of politics, how can we tell that it is a success? We may have achieved all objectives, but how many more objectives have arisen? How many disgruntled people have you left, plotting to change the world for the "better"? There is no way of knowing for sure. And besides, since there has been so many "positive" interventions in history, each making life better, how come the world isn't stable? How come your morals aren't dictating the entire world by now?
If I had absolutely any way of bringing my point across, I've got to find some common moral ground. In truth, you are right. However, if I were to simply say "war isn't bad or good", all I'll get for my trouble is people tuning out, and possibly a troll mod.
[Mods: please read before the inevitable troll mod]
What your wife said is common and essentially correct. Why should she have anything to hide? After all, society didn't create the law and law enforcement for police NOT to catch criminals. Why shouldn't they be able to find the culprits without restrictions?
The answer is, of course, "Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?" That we rely on police to be honest if we were to hand the power over to them, which is something we cannot realistically do. The problem is, however, when the power is handed to us, we must be trusted to be honest, since it is harder for the police to pull us up.
In other words, I'm saying such legislation does not make America a police state. There will always be a balance, and this balance is shifting to the police.
This is intrinsically linked to copyright, since copyright holders are being protected by the law. With any shift (like this one towards authoritarianism), there will always be unrest. Copyright is becoming a political issues due to this, not to some parallel to environmentalism.
Environmentalism is not, as some people believe, a people vs. the man struggle, like copyright tends to be. Environmentalism is very much about people from all over society disagreeing about whether SUVs, long hot showers, cheap wood furniture, etc are worth giving up for the suggestion that living will become that much harder for future generations. Big Oil are only part of the problem.
Easy. Anyone else but me. After all, I can't speak for anyone else.
I know there is a lot of suffering out there, and believe me, I don't like it. Be it the guy down the road or the country on the other side of the planet. The point is that I don't trust my wisdom and judgment to interfere with their lives. Issues tend to be complex, and consequences tend to be unexpected. I just hope this doesn't colour me a monster in your eyes.
That we should permit the warlords to win out, cause a major war, allow it to spill over into our interests (and our homeland), against the will of the majority in those countries?
We allow them to fight, but we protect our interests if need be. They can think whatever they want, but as soon as the two ideologies directly and irresolvably contradict each other, we defend it. This doesn't make it "right", it makes it what we stand up for, and we stand up for our rights, not other's.
Denying the very existence of the concept, however, and arguing that different national groups operate under entirely separate moral structures is amazingly stupid
So you don't agree with it. Fine. But I ask you, where do you draw the line? Where does something you don't agree with become something evil? I believe it's incredibly naive to believe that you can define evil, that your opinion > some dictator's opinion. Oh, and BTW, I don't actually deny the concept of evil (I know I stated the opposite in my last post), rather I see it only existing in relation to an ideology. To put it this way: you are evil to me, since you feel the need to intervene in other people's affairs.
Either you are incredibly naive, or incredibly stupid, and I, for one, am pleased that you are not an international policy maker.
Ditto to you too. Nice to have a discussion with you.
BTW...
I hate to invoke Godwin's law, but what about the Nazis?
I don't think that violates Godwin's law, since you aren't applying the holocaust to some more trivial situation (such as the issue of compulsory ID).
It strikes me as odd that students must leave campus to learn, and smacks of censorship in horrible ways.
The point is that this is the University's connection. They pay for it, they provide it as a resource, they can limit this resource however they want. If you want to browse the entire internet, pay for the connection.
And no, this is not uncommon. I know that my friend, who administers a primary/high school network, censors his school's connection. He's had plenty of complaints, but he knows what happens when the filters go down. Horny teens look up porn, try to hide it, teachers catch them, write home to their parents, parents complain, yadi-yadi-yadda...
The Home versions are limited to 5 'concurrent' connections. Which seems quite reasonable, because if you have a big enough family that you have 5 OTHER users in your house accessing a file or printer on your computer 'at the same time' then you probably need something other than the HOME edition.
Whatever happened to the/. I knew? Where people didn't just roll over when a big-ass company imposes artificial restrictions deliberately to software that you should be owning, rather than licensing? Whatever happened to anger over gouging, locking down, and stonewalling?
I firmly believe in moral relativity, and while I respect your point, it completely goes against the principle. I don't think it's really possible to say "I'm into moral relativity, but I think we should do something." You can't support the argument in practice and then dismiss it as useless when any test comes along.
I believe that we should be paralysed by relativism, because the alternative is terrible IMHO. We don't need to impose our views on others, no matter how much you believe in them. How many wars would have been prevented if everyone were content to agree to disagree? And how do these disagreements benefit others? These systems never last for ever. There will always be someone else ready to pile their views on these people. On one hand, you want to make people happy in the short term, on the other, someone wants to sacrifice that in order to make the country great. All the shifts cause rifts, unrest, possibly war. Is perpetuating this pendulum swing going to benefit anyone?
I put it to you that if you could take an individual, strip away ethnicity, nationalism, religion, and upbringing, and allow a rational choice between a liberal democratic system and a totalitarian system, the vast, vast majority of sane humans would choose the former.
Someone once noted that the government is too important to be left to the people (the name escapes me). The people's short term happiness may not be a priority. I put it to you to prove that the happiness of the people is of absolute paramount importance.
If it was merely the success of various revolutions several hundred years ago, why did the 20th century (and indeed the 19th and 18th) feature a continued liberalisation of our society?
Possibly due to the fact that power was amassing with countries that supported liberalism (for whatever reason), and that any other country that wanted any power embraced it. Other ideologies are currently losing the war. Who knows, maybe one day the shoe will be on the other foot.
China's system of government is anti-humanist, corrupt, inefficient, brutal, militaristic, autocratic, and by almost any definition (other than the Chinese, which you seem to prefer) evil.
And that word, ladies and gentlemen, is the one word that we want abolished.
Well, I, for one, do not want anything more effective to replace it when it flops. This is clearly over-stepping the bounds of fair-use. Hell, this is over-stepping the bounds of traditional-what-you-paid-for kind of use. I really don't want to be called a pirate simply because I watch DVDs on my laptop.
Slashdot Mirror
...I love Slashdot!
How, exactly, would you define "serving their customers"? Microsoft (or any other company for that matter) may define "service" as providing a product and making sure that people are satisfied. By that reasoning, it's necessary for Microsoft to take surveys from their customers, and possibly log their names/IP addresses to make sure that no-one over-represents any one problem (OK, I'm stretching it here). They may also consider entertainment giants as their customers (remember this, or this?), and therefore feel that providing the private information of pirates to them, or something like that, is necessary to serve their customers.
I don't want to start a flamewar. I just wanted to say that things are more complicated than that.
The issue runs deeper than that. Our entire society is based around the concept of reducing the impact of evolution on the human race. We vaccinate, we heal, we council. We protect people, but this takes its toll in the form of wussiness. I'm still trying to figure out where to draw the line between protection and survival of the fittest. Certainly the latter is easier, since it's all natural.
Hey, it almost made sense.
What the hell is a TV? And this "internet" thingy? It's so new and scary!
Let me take the time to say that everything has effects on other things. Period. It's obvious that a generation not so gradually increasing their television viewing will have effects, the question is what and whether we will put up with it. The parent post is probably right to an extent. Television interferes with our ability to communicate, but it probably increases creativity, due to the constant exposure to fiction (a topic for a different thread). Just like how autism isn't all bad. I mean, you do have intelligence, and lots of it.
So yeah, TV will change society. Do you really think we attained perfection before the invention of the TV?
WTF are you talking about? Everyone knows that correlation has been closely linked with causation.
That must have taken a lot of guts to stand up to those KDE developers, Mr Coward.
Dude. I think you just broke my brain.
Oh wait, it's written in Perl. My bad.
Damn straight. Look at these jokers.
Yeah, yeah, I know that 558 or so are referring to the Zune.
I don't believe that moral relativism is a moral matter, rather a scientific matter. We know, for example, that people, like other animals, will always act based upon what satisfies them. Other people's happiness will not directly make us happy. Have we seen any evidence of any moralistic tendencies that are hard coded into our biology? No, for the most part, we haven't. So, therefore, everything else in our constantly changing and adapting brain is up for grabs.
The one exception to that last question is the protection of children, which is something that we biologically are destined to do. However, this is becoming increasingly irrelevant, with human abominations such as corporations: i.e. flexible morals without biological constraints. We, as a society, are becoming separated from our morals through this process. So you might say that the one absolute moral that we have is now becoming relative.
I believe the reason why we can't stabilise the world is that morals can't possibly fulfill everyone's needs all the time (or for that matter, most of the time). If we had attained moral perfection, then we would have no crime, no dissent, no war. The mere fact that this has not happened makes me feel that morals are not absolute.
A guy is seen talking with about four other guys in front of the shopping district. Each are seen with guns. Security is notified and they check their RFID readers and cameras. They find them, send some agents in, and reel 'em in.
Assuming that they can iron out the problem of switching/taking off the collars, it could work to quickly take down threats. It at least has potential to fulfill its objectives. It's just a pity that these objectives don't include preserving privacy.
After all, we won't end up any worse, just different. And in my personal opinion, spending resources on fixing what we perceive as other people's problems, we, and possibly they, will suffer.
But a lot of this is only my personal opinion and has little bearing on my views on moral relativity. I accept that I have my own views, and I accept that they don't apply necessarily to anyone else but me.
In theory, we can predict everything perfectly, since everything is simply matter and energy behaving according to very rigid physics laws. But in practice, there is no way in hell that anyone is going to keep track of all the variables that govern what happens next. I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this.
When we do predict something accurately in terms of politics, how can we tell that it is a success? We may have achieved all objectives, but how many more objectives have arisen? How many disgruntled people have you left, plotting to change the world for the "better"? There is no way of knowing for sure. And besides, since there has been so many "positive" interventions in history, each making life better, how come the world isn't stable? How come your morals aren't dictating the entire world by now?
I absolutely saw that one coming.
If I had absolutely any way of bringing my point across, I've got to find some common moral ground. In truth, you are right. However, if I were to simply say "war isn't bad or good", all I'll get for my trouble is people tuning out, and possibly a troll mod.
Then again, she was only being called a lesbian.
[Mods: please read before the inevitable troll mod]
What your wife said is common and essentially correct. Why should she have anything to hide? After all, society didn't create the law and law enforcement for police NOT to catch criminals. Why shouldn't they be able to find the culprits without restrictions?
The answer is, of course, "Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?" That we rely on police to be honest if we were to hand the power over to them, which is something we cannot realistically do. The problem is, however, when the power is handed to us, we must be trusted to be honest, since it is harder for the police to pull us up.
In other words, I'm saying such legislation does not make America a police state. There will always be a balance, and this balance is shifting to the police.
This is intrinsically linked to copyright, since copyright holders are being protected by the law. With any shift (like this one towards authoritarianism), there will always be unrest. Copyright is becoming a political issues due to this, not to some parallel to environmentalism.
Environmentalism is not, as some people believe, a people vs. the man struggle, like copyright tends to be. Environmentalism is very much about people from all over society disagreeing about whether SUVs, long hot showers, cheap wood furniture, etc are worth giving up for the suggestion that living will become that much harder for future generations. Big Oil are only part of the problem.
I guess you missed the irony in my post. I absolutely agree. I just think it's funny to look back at our old, dusty ideals. Ahh, the memories!
I know there is a lot of suffering out there, and believe me, I don't like it. Be it the guy down the road or the country on the other side of the planet. The point is that I don't trust my wisdom and judgment to interfere with their lives. Issues tend to be complex, and consequences tend to be unexpected. I just hope this doesn't colour me a monster in your eyes.
We allow them to fight, but we protect our interests if need be. They can think whatever they want, but as soon as the two ideologies directly and irresolvably contradict each other, we defend it. This doesn't make it "right", it makes it what we stand up for, and we stand up for our rights, not other's.
So you don't agree with it. Fine. But I ask you, where do you draw the line? Where does something you don't agree with become something evil? I believe it's incredibly naive to believe that you can define evil, that your opinion > some dictator's opinion. Oh, and BTW, I don't actually deny the concept of evil (I know I stated the opposite in my last post), rather I see it only existing in relation to an ideology. To put it this way: you are evil to me, since you feel the need to intervene in other people's affairs.
Ditto to you too. Nice to have a discussion with you.
BTW...
I don't think that violates Godwin's law, since you aren't applying the holocaust to some more trivial situation (such as the issue of compulsory ID).
And no, this is not uncommon. I know that my friend, who administers a primary/high school network, censors his school's connection. He's had plenty of complaints, but he knows what happens when the filters go down. Horny teens look up porn, try to hide it, teachers catch them, write home to their parents, parents complain, yadi-yadi-yadda...
Whatever happened to the
Try hiding a sausage that size from the boss!
I believe that we should be paralysed by relativism, because the alternative is terrible IMHO. We don't need to impose our views on others, no matter how much you believe in them. How many wars would have been prevented if everyone were content to agree to disagree? And how do these disagreements benefit others? These systems never last for ever. There will always be someone else ready to pile their views on these people. On one hand, you want to make people happy in the short term, on the other, someone wants to sacrifice that in order to make the country great. All the shifts cause rifts, unrest, possibly war. Is perpetuating this pendulum swing going to benefit anyone?
Someone once noted that the government is too important to be left to the people (the name escapes me). The people's short term happiness may not be a priority. I put it to you to prove that the happiness of the people is of absolute paramount importance.
Possibly due to the fact that power was amassing with countries that supported liberalism (for whatever reason), and that any other country that wanted any power embraced it. Other ideologies are currently losing the war. Who knows, maybe one day the shoe will be on the other foot.
And that word, ladies and gentlemen, is the one word that we want abolished.