So God prefers one people over another (over all others, in fact)
Is that right? Would we accept that conduct out of any human institution?
If there is tension - another word for "contradiction" - between God's sovereign authority over creation and human accountability for our actions, does that not suggest that one tenet or the other is in error?
The Bible is a human work, subject to human fallibility. Could this not be a case where human hands and hearts and minds failed to properly express God's will?
I'm sorry, but all this "the pot questions not the potter" is a cop-out, an intellectually bankrupt philosophy.
Let me ask you this again - are you OK with this?
I give you permission to temporarily cast God in your own image - would the God you would create be THIS God?
And having read Salon's analysis... I stand by my assessment.
What the Salon author is missing - actually, misreading - is the military tone. Taken at face value, yes, it comes off as arrogant and even a little clueless. But when read by a person accustomed to the military tone in writing (which is usually heavy in irony and black humour) one sees the actual intent. For example, I can tell that the author is more than a little frustrated at his inability to nail down the precise cause of the reduction of the attacks. He *knows* he doesn't know the exact answer. When he calls the idea of an operational pause "boring", this is an acknowledgment that this isn't the answer that anybody wants to hear, but is quite possibly the most likely answer. And he genuinely thinks they are doing a better job of engaging the local people, although he subtly hints that barging into the homes of innocents isn't doing them any favours.
I like Salon; I read it almost daily, and agree with a large part of what I read there. But this time, they're off base.
Let me ask you this, not as a Christian, but as a thinking, rational human being:
Are you OK with this?
Is not the Christian God supposed to be a God of Love, a God who so loved the world (and by implication, humanity) that he sacrificed his only son such that they might be saved?
How does that jibe with this version of God, who has a priori decided who will be saved and who will not, such that the masses of the unsaved are doomed to everlasting torment from the day of their birth? How can you justify a God who willfully - WILLFULLY, given that nothing happens in His creation that he does not allow, so this is ON PURPOSE - condemns the majority of his creation to graceless lives and eternal torment?
In your world, nothing any man does is ever of any consequence. No act of personal heroism, no act of grace, no act of love or sacrifice means ANYTHING, because everybody is just following the script? Then what's the point?
At least in a theology that admits free will, one's choices mean something. One can choose to live a virtuous life, and be rewarded. One can choose to live a life of wickedness, and be punished. And most importantly, one can start wicked, and reform, and be redeemed.
Effectively, there is no redemption in your worldview. We're all just automatons, living out our script, and whatever evil we do is of no consequence, either to our own souls or to the lives and souls of our fellow man.
And you are OK with this?
How does someone, a student of divinity no less, paint themselves into a theological corner that requires them to transform the Christian God of Love into a grim puppeteer?
I'm sorry sir, I remain utterly horrified and shocked to my very core. That anyone could read the Bible and come to such grim conclusions (and clearly you aren't alone) is perhaps the saddest (in terms of sorrow and despair) thing I have ever encountered.
Having read my share of int briefs, that's actually a pretty good analysis with what looks to me like an honest attempt at figuring out what is going on.
I see no incompetence there - I see good, honest staffwork. Perhaps a touch informal in places, but that's about it.
Intelligence is a slippery fish, not an exact science. It is normal to have a great deal of uncertainty.
You can't just drop that particular bomb and then scamper away and hide.
A "sovereign God who governs all of creation" (by which I take you mean that nothing happens without God's direct intervention) and "a God who holds humans responsible for their actions" are mutually exclusive - otherwise you have a God who makes humans do certain things and then punishes them for carrying out His will.
That's a pretty sadistic God, don't you think? To hold out the possibility of salvation (via the Gospels) but then deny it to all except those he chooses to make follow his commandments?
You seem well educated, but this moral philosophy/theology is frankly horrifying. It means that any particular person is either saved or dammed at birth, and nothing they do has any bearing whatsoever on their ultimate fate. Furthermore, it makes God directly responsible for all the evil in the world, because those doing evil are only carrying out God's instructions to them.
What sect are you? Seriously?
Every Christian philosophy that I have encountered to date has centered around the concept of free will. One must CHOOSE to be saved. One must CHOOSE to live one's life in a godly manner, and so earn a place in heaven (or a deserved place in hell) Different sects differ on the mechanics of the process, but at the core they share the belief that one's eternal reward is a function of the consequences of one's choices and actions, not on a rigid pre-destiny.
I'm frankly horrified - what a nihilistic worldview you have!
Please, enlighten me on where I have got it wrong.
If you don't have "free will", then you never make any real choices, as all your decisions have been pre-made by God.
If that is the case, then God is just a puppeteer, playing out whatever puppet show He happens to like.
There is no Good or Evil, there is only God - and God wills the acts of the murderer or rapist every bit as much as He wills the actions of the teacher, preacher, or scientist.
No heaven, no hell, no salvation, no redemption - because these depend on humans making CHOICES, and choices are only meaningful if there is "free will".
"Free will" is a core aspect of Christianity. Without it, Christ Himself is meaningless.
Personally, I'm an Atheist, and a Secular Humanist at that. There are no gods or any other form of supernatural forces at work in the Universe. We, our sentience, and our free will, are the result of a spectacularly unlikely series of events, and so are immeasurably precious.
A race car is a tool for turning money into smoke and noise. A LOT of money. Know how to make a small fortune in racing? Start with a big one.
And as you progress past a certain level, it takes cubic dollars to advance - and the people with access to that sort of money suffer from a reality distortion field strength that has to be experienced to be believed.
I had a lot of fun racing, and I met a lot of cool people and got to do a lot of cool stuff, but I also spent a metric assload of money with little to show for it save a website, a bunch of trophies, a Speed TV clip, and a bruised credit card.
...in that I think that it really is your *duty*, as a citizen of a representative democracy, to participate in the political process by voting.
The core issue here is that while autocratic governments can be very efficient when run with a wise and enlightenedly benevolent hand, the probability of wisdom and enlightened benevolence arising in an autocratic ruler is very small. Even if you do get lucky and get one, the problem of succession is a real and dangerous one - societies rarely outlast a "the Great" in their leadership.
And while the payoff from a "good" autocrat is very large, the penalty from a bad one is equally large; potentially (and catastrophically) enormous.
By spreading political power out amongst the people, representative democracy seeks to place limits on the excesses. It makes it more difficult to get a "the Great" in power (and once there, he is nowhere near as effective as he might had he access to less fettered expressions of power) but the tradeoff is that you also limit (and theoretically, at least) prevent the arrival of a "the Terrible" holding the reins of power.
And in the modern age, with access to modern media and modern weapons, the impact of a "the Terrible" is potentially far worse than it has ever been throughout history. Think of how much destruction Hitler unleashed with just 1940s technology. It is very much in humanity's best interests to put strict limits on would-be "Terribles".
"Terribles" are, almost by definition, extremists. Extremists are not necessarily loners; it doesn't seem to be difficult to collect groups of them. And "extremist" doesn't mean "stupid" - they are quite capable of performing intelligent analysis on their situation and manipulating the system to their own ends.
In a representative democracy, that means they vote, and they do everything they can to encourage (or dupe, or intimidate) like-minded people or weak-minded people into voting along with them.
If more reasonable or more moderate people choose not to vote, they are effectively making each extremists vote more powerful. Not voting really is a vote for the motivated extremist.
But that's not all.
Politicians in a representative democracy take their cues from the citizenry; they choose courses of action most likely to win them votes (or least likely to lose them votes) In theory, this should limit excesses because excessive behavior should be met with a staggering loss of votes from the moderates (or perhaps even a staggeringly large effort, headed by the moderates, to remove them from office by more direct methods than waiting for the next scheduled election (like impeachment). If, however, moderates do nothing, then excessive behavior is *rewarded* and thus encouraged.
If you, as a moderate, take no political action, you are disabling the core self-limiting effect that is the major purpose of a representative democracy, and essentially turning over control of your country to the extremists.
It is you duty as a citizen to protect the country from the extremists. The current state of affairs is your PERSONAL responsibility - after all, the people in power are your PERSONAL representatives. They take their actions in YOUR name.
I agree with you that it is damn near impossible to pick a "right" party; the choice always does seem to come down to a choice between the Turd Sandwich and the Giant Douche. In these cases, pick the lesser of two evils. But pick! Otherwise, you turn over operation of YOUR country to the extremists.
The laws of armed conflict lay out the boundaries in which a soldier may act. Within these boundaries, killing is permissible.
The responsibility of operating within these boundaries is that of the military, its military leadership, and ultimately, the individual soldier.
A soldier who crosses out of these boundaries is personally responsible for his/her conduct (as is the leadership of that soldier).
So in that sense, we agree, no, being a member of a military organization is not a blanket absolution for any acts that individual might commit.
But the laying out of those boundaries and the assignation of various people as lying inside those boundaries is very much a civilian responsibility. The military needs to be able to trust that the missions it is assigned are just and right. If the mission is unjust, then those who need to be held accountable are the civilians who assigned the mission, not the soldiers who carried it out. (within certain limits eg rape is NEVER permissible, so a mission to "rape every person inside a certain village" is an illegal mission no matter who orders it)
After reading the Wiki article, two things come to mind:
1. He appears to be getting a fair trial, and the system is taking him and his claims seriously. Keep in mind that the military has to follow due diligence to ensure that the case is a legitimate example of a soldier attempting to do the right thing in the face of an immoral order, and not just a simple attempt to avoid being deployed to a combat zone. Also keep in mind that in a case as politically charged as this, that resolving it is going to take time.
2. But reading between the lines, it appears that the soldier in question has been making public appearances, making public statements, and incorporating politics into both - and there is a very fine line between (rightly) refusing an illegal order and (wrongly) exhibiting disloyal behavior. This is a very, very difficult path to walk and he isn't doing himself any favours, it seems.
What is YOUR premise then - that all killing, no matter the purpose, is intrinsically immoral?
If so, then we're at an impasse, because I make a distinction between killing in defense of the state in legal combat, and murder.
There ARE bad guys. There ARE people who will do evil, and who can only be stopped by a carefully controlled act of violence. The execution of that violence - and the limitation of that violence to legitimate targets - is the purpose of the military.
This is the elemental paradox of military service: that it requires a finely honed sense of personal morality such that, when called upon to execute the ultimate level of violence, the soldier can restrict himself to only the force necessary to do the job, against only the people who are legitimate targets. You are more likely to find that essential morality in volunteers than conscripts.
Sadly, things don't always go as planned, and sometimes there are lapses. But we expect that those lapses will be dealt with harshly and in most cases they certainly are. A soldier who crosses the line between sheepdog and wolf is an abomination and a betrayal of the core values of the military profession.
Even more sadly, sometimes there are mistakes and accidents, and the lethality of modern weaponry is so high that honest mistakes can have terrible consequences. We take all the precautions we can to prevent them, and if one happens, it is devastating to all involved.
If you are attempting to portray soldiers as cold hearted killers for cash; men who chose to kill for money no matter the mission or the causus belli... well then sir, you are so fundamentally mistaken about the military ethos as to beggar description.
Soldiers do what they do because they have a duty to fulfill, and in a volunteer army, every one of those men and women have chosen to place themselves in harm's way for the greater good of their country and society as a whole.
And "harm" has a broader definition than just being placed in physical danger; there is a cost to personally killing another human being, even from a position of near-perfect safety.
But soldiers do not determine policy; elected officials do. Soldiers only carry out the policy of those who have the authority to employ them, and they do so because there is a sacred trust between the soldier and the state that the policy the soldier will be called upon to enforce is right and just.
There are boundaries, and we expect our soldiers to recognize them. We expect soldiers to be able to tell the difference between the lawful application of deadly force and unlawful murder, and we expect soldiers to carry out the first and to refuse to carry out the second. Soldiers who cross the line we expect to be disciplined in the harshest manner possible.
But ultimately, the people responsible for the where and when and how of soldiers plying their trade is the responsibility of the civilian government, and where the soldiers of the state are citizens who have voluntarily given up some of their rights as citizens in order to defend the state, then the onus on the government to ensure that it tasks its soldiers with only right and just missions is at it's penultimate.
And in a social democracy, the onus is on the ordinary citizenry to ensure that the actions of its elected officials conform to the expected social norm. If it is not, then it is the duty of the citizenry to remove the government in power and replace it with one that does the right thing.
If you don't like what your soldiers are doing, you need to go after your government.
Well then, the time you spend massaging the image (in Photoshop or whatever) to produce a better print result is also a service, isn't it?
And that service takes time and skill, and so is worth charging for. If you are any good at it, it is worth charging a premium for.
A potential invoice might look like this:
- 5 hours on site taking pictures (includes all raw photo data files) - media charge for same
- 2 hours identifying 10 best images - 4 hours color-correcting 10 best images (includes massaged image data files)
- 2 framed prints of colour-corrected best image... the rates for these I leave to you to determine.
As a customer, I get a data card or DVD or whatever of all the raw data files, plus the images you massaged, plus as many prints as I choose to buy. I get to keep all my pictures, you get paid for the time, effort, skill, and resources you invested in the project.
That strikes me as a very fair deal for everybody concerned.
The trick is that (aside from the physical print, frame, etc) what you are being paid for are your professional services and the associated skills, NOT the data files themselves.
I understand that nobody likes a pay cut, but the world IS moving on, and the pay cut of being rendered completely superfluous is far worse than the pay cut that goes along with adapting your business model to the new reality.
The present - perhaps "previous"? - business model relied upon scarcity. If you held the negative to a photo, you held the only thing capable of producing a high-quality reproduction of that image. It was possible to make new negative from positive prints, but doing so resulted in a marked loss of quality, and the negative itself was irreplaceable.
Plus there was a certain investment of time, skill, and resources involved with producing a new print from the negative.
If I broke into your place of work and stole/destroyed your negative, that photo was gone forever.
But nowadays, the digital file can be copied without loss of quality ad infinitum. If I make a copy of your raw data file, you have not been materially harmed - you can still make copies - and all that has happened is you have lost exclusivity to that image.
And that image can be reproduced almost anywhere with minimal skill and investment in resources.
Effectively, the scarcity of the ability to duplicate images has been eliminated. There is next to zero cost involved with the duplication of images once they are in the memory card. As such, the image files themselves have next to no actual value.
What HASN'T changed is the necessity for a skilled photographer to take that image in the first place.
This implies - hell, it yells at the top of its lungs - that the business model of selling exclusive prints is now utterly broken, and pro photographers (and other media producers) need to find other business models. If the automobile obsoletes your buggy whip manufacturing business model, you need to adapt.
My suggestion is that you regard photography as a service. You are being contracted for your ability to take artistically skilled photos. You price your services based on the amount of time you have invested and your level of artistic skill, and you sell the customer the digital data files you produce for him.
I know photogs working to this model now, and they seem to be doing well. The days of the reprint gravy train are over, but people seem to be willing to pay for the quality of SERVICE they get.
While I can appreciate the level of craftsmanship and artistry that went into the repair of the barn door, I cannot fail to note that the cows seem to have escaped in the interim.....
Fission is easy, but you've got a finite (and very short) amount of time to actually split atoms, because the whole reaction is busy exploding and you don't have fissionable material in contact with itself for very long. So the trick getting a bigger bang is to figure out ways to get a greater proportion of your fissile material to split.
If you build a bomb with a chunk of Plutonium inside a shell of deuterium inside the main bomb, you can get the deuterium to fuse and release a metric assload of neutrons plus an equally large number of xrays. The neutrons from the initiator explosion plus the neutrons from the fusing act to react a large number of the Plutonium core's atoms, and the pressure from the initiator explosion plus the pressure from the xrays from the fusion reaction serve to hold the core together long enough to get a lot of it to split - a lot more than you would otherise.
So you get yield from the initiator (at the usual amount for a fission reaction) plus yield from the fusion reaction, but the lion's share of the yield comes from getting a lot more of the Plutonium core to split than would normally happen for a core of that given mass.
Am I right?
I confess that I find the processes in modern nuclear weapons fascinating, and I'm flabbergasted at just how advanced the technology is - and I wonder if maybe we wouldn't be better off with those amazing brains working on fusion power instead of weapons miniaturization.
I've read that article before, and I've read a debunking of the debunking (that I don't have a link to at my fingertips, sorry)
But even if we take as a given that "Men Against Fire" is pure fiction, it doesn't actually change the value of Grossman's analysis. Since the publication of On Killing, there have been a number of different studies on law enforcement and military deadly force encounters (Iraq and Afghanistan have provided plenty of opportunity) and that research has validated Col Grossman's position. The physiological and psychological responses to deadly force encounters as detailed in On Killing are very real, and the stress inoculation techniques introduced in On Killing and fleshed out in On Combat actually work, and are being adopted by militaries and law enforcement agencies worldwide.
I have personally been shot with Simunition thanks to Col Grossman's work.;)
The extension and extrapolation of this very real and very powerful research into the realm of videogames still strikes me as less well founded, and the arguments Col Grossman makes are nowhere near as well supported as his other stuff - and like I said earlier, he can get a little shrill at times. Clearly, playing first person shooters is not turning children into out-of-control mass murderers.
But I do find myself wondering if the increasing lethality of those who DO choose to walk that path may have something to do with the fact that you can practice these actions in simulation via FPS games. Maybe - *maybe* - there is some connection here.
The main problem I see is the difficulty in testing that hypothesis. I can see no ethical way to test if exposure to FPS games makes it easier to kill somebody "for real", given that the only way to trigger the physiological reaction is to put the person in an actual deadly encounter (or a sufficiently realistic facsimile such that to the subject, it *is* real - see Miliken)
I do not believe that humans are born killers; quite the contrary, there is a HUGE body of evidence that counters this. But neither are humans some sort of blissfully peaceful and benign entities either.
I believe that we are essentially primates; that the behavior of a chimp troop or a gang of gorillas in the mist is very close to the underlying human behavioral norms. We scheme. We plot. We think of ways to increase our social standing by sucking up to our superiors and trampling on our subordinates. We are quite capable of being nasty , spiteful, manipulative, and mean.
But when it comes to actual violence, we, like most animals, are more about posturing and blustering about actual effects - and it doesn't take Grossman to notice this, Keagan has written about this as well. Very, very few people will ever be exposed to actual violence; fewer still will encounter deadly violence, and still fewer will encounter well-executed physical violence. Ugly we can be, but we are not all innate killers - and I think it is no accident that those who do kill usually employ a means that enables killing at a distance with little in the way of physical effort. As tough as it is to shoot someone with intent to kill, it is far tougher to stick a knife into them.
So to sum up, I don't think Doom et al are responsible for killing sprees; not in the slightest. I do wonder, though, if perhaps Doom etc are enablers towards more *effective* killing sprees.
I'm with you in that I don't think video games (of any sort) *encourage* violence - as in "this nice meek little girl played through 3 levels of Doom and then went on a killing spree" sort of causation.
I do wonder, however, about a certain aspect of video games, or at least, a certain subgenre: first person shooters.
Most people have an innate inability to kill (save by accident or misadventure); there is an integral resistance built into humans to kill other humans.
There is a large body of research behind this, but you can see evidence in any security camera footage of a shooting. Usually, the shooter needs to work himself up to pulling the trigger. There's a bunch of posturing and shouting and whatnot, and when he does pull the trigger it isn't a proper stance and careful aim; it is haphazard and nearly random.
Even police cruiser videos of cops getting into firefights are as likely to show the cop screeching and hopping around and blazing away wildly as to show a shooter in a proper shooting stance calmly firing his weapon. (Unless there are groups; groups of cops tend to steady each other by the presence of friends and not wanting to embarrass themselves)
That doesn't happen all the time, there are some people who are entirely capable of killing in cold blood. But most humans have phobic-level responses to violence and that isn't conducive to accurate and deadly shooting.
Armies and police forces deal with this by training soldiers and officers on realistic targets and going through firing drills over and over and over again until they are muscle memory more than conscious acts. Time and again you read about cops or soldiers in firefights where they say "the training took over" and they were able to function correctly during the extreme stress of a deadly force encounter.
The keys to this working are "realistic targets" and "repetition". Shooting at a bulls-eye target isn't good enough; you need a human figure target or a silhouette target to create the effect. You need to train the hindbrain that it is OK to shoot humans (or human shaped things)
And what is a first person shooter? A game where you shoot at human or humanesque targets over and over again.
Let me reiterate - I don't think playing FPS games in any way increases the probability that the player will conduct a real act of violence. But I can't help but wonder if maybe we're enabling those people who ARE likely to conduct violent acts to get through their normal human aversion to killing and fire accurately and lethally.
I know that the researcher who did most of the groundbreaking work on the psychology and physiology of killing and deadly force encounters is utterly convinced that we are desensitizing children to the act of shooting another human being. He can get rather shrill about it, using terms like "murder simulator".
I think he is overstating the case; the act of shooting someone in Half Life is NOT an exact physical analogue for shooting someone in Real Life. There's still a pretty big step between a mouse and a handgun. But unlike a movie, which is passive, a game is ACTIVE. The bad guys only get shot as a direct consequence of the player ACTING. and the player is rewarded for accurate shooting and high body counts.
So while I don't think the shrillness and hyperbole is at all warranted, I can't help but wonder if maybe he is on to something.
OK, how about the quest where buddy sucked himself into his painting, and you have to go in and rescue him - complete with the game world rendered using an oil-painting shader?
How about the quest where you follow the merchant back to his supplier, and discover he's (unknowingly) buying stuff from a grave robber?
How about figuring out how to infiltrate the Mythic Dawn stonghold - after which the word goes out and their sleeper cells start activating and hunting you down?
It's not the *game's* fault if you lack imagination and turned it into just a "timekiller". I've never had to "gold farm" in Oblivion, and once you get the refillable soul gem thingy, keeping magic weapons powered up isn't a problem - just enchant a weapon with a 1 second soul trap on strike in addition to whatever effect you want.
And you complain about repetition, and then uphold CoH as the antidote? I enjoyed CoH as well, but once I played through the official campaign, there hasn't been been any reason to revisit it - it's just the same old same old capture the point, build the resource grind.
I'm not claiming that Oblivion is *perfect* but it is very, very good. Me and my wife are enjoying the hell out of it, and it is laying the groundwork for future games in a similar vein the same way Ultima did.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but I think you're on crack.
I played Ultima III (first Apple ][, then C=64, then Ultima IV (C=64) Ultima V (Amiga and PC) and Ultima 6 (PC)
Great games, all of them. Pinnacle of the art at the time.
Then the torch was passed to Dungeon Master 1 and 2 (Amiga)
Then a loooooong dry spell.
Then Neverwinter Nights (Linux) which, while flawed in some ways, more than made up for it in others; particularly some of the community content.
And then I tried Oblivion... and I'm still hip-deep in it... and this is easily the best RPG since the Ultima days. There is some absolutely stellar writing in here, more quests than you can shake a stick at, and nearly unbelievable freedom of action. And it is freakin' GORGEOUS.
It's not perfect; the levelling and experience portions don't come off quite the way I think they were intended. There could be more variety in the voice acting. There could be more individuality in the cave systems etc - but those are minor quibbles for what has been, for me, the most immersive RPG in a very, very long time.
My wife will sit with me and watch me play - because to her, it's a movie to watch, and the story keeps her sucked in. What better endorsement than that?
Slashdot Mirror
I'll buy that assessment.
DG
So God prefers one people over another (over all others, in fact)
Is that right? Would we accept that conduct out of any human institution?
If there is tension - another word for "contradiction" - between God's sovereign authority over creation and human accountability for our actions, does that not suggest that one tenet or the other is in error?
The Bible is a human work, subject to human fallibility. Could this not be a case where human hands and hearts and minds failed to properly express God's will?
I'm sorry, but all this "the pot questions not the potter" is a cop-out, an intellectually bankrupt philosophy.
Let me ask you this again - are you OK with this?
I give you permission to temporarily cast God in your own image - would the God you would create be THIS God?
DG
And having read Salon's analysis... I stand by my assessment.
What the Salon author is missing - actually, misreading - is the military tone. Taken at face value, yes, it comes off as arrogant and even a little clueless. But when read by a person accustomed to the military tone in writing (which is usually heavy in irony and black humour) one sees the actual intent. For example, I can tell that the author is more than a little frustrated at his inability to nail down the precise cause of the reduction of the attacks. He *knows* he doesn't know the exact answer. When he calls the idea of an operational pause "boring", this is an acknowledgment that this isn't the answer that anybody wants to hear, but is quite possibly the most likely answer. And he genuinely thinks they are doing a better job of engaging the local people, although he subtly hints that barging into the homes of innocents isn't doing them any favours.
I like Salon; I read it almost daily, and agree with a large part of what I read there. But this time, they're off base.
DG
Let me ask you this, not as a Christian, but as a thinking, rational human being:
Are you OK with this?
Is not the Christian God supposed to be a God of Love, a God who so loved the world (and by implication, humanity) that he sacrificed his only son such that they might be saved?
How does that jibe with this version of God, who has a priori decided who will be saved and who will not, such that the masses of the unsaved are doomed to everlasting torment from the day of their birth? How can you justify a God who willfully - WILLFULLY, given that nothing happens in His creation that he does not allow, so this is ON PURPOSE - condemns the majority of his creation to graceless lives and eternal torment?
In your world, nothing any man does is ever of any consequence. No act of personal heroism, no act of grace, no act of love or sacrifice means ANYTHING, because everybody is just following the script? Then what's the point?
At least in a theology that admits free will, one's choices mean something. One can choose to live a virtuous life, and be rewarded. One can choose to live a life of wickedness, and be punished. And most importantly, one can start wicked, and reform, and be redeemed.
Effectively, there is no redemption in your worldview. We're all just automatons, living out our script, and whatever evil we do is of no consequence, either to our own souls or to the lives and souls of our fellow man.
And you are OK with this?
How does someone, a student of divinity no less, paint themselves into a theological corner that requires them to transform the Christian God of Love into a grim puppeteer?
I'm sorry sir, I remain utterly horrified and shocked to my very core. That anyone could read the Bible and come to such grim conclusions (and clearly you aren't alone) is perhaps the saddest (in terms of sorrow and despair) thing I have ever encountered.
DG
Having read my share of int briefs, that's actually a pretty good analysis with what looks to me like an honest attempt at figuring out what is going on.
I see no incompetence there - I see good, honest staffwork. Perhaps a touch informal in places, but that's about it.
Intelligence is a slippery fish, not an exact science. It is normal to have a great deal of uncertainty.
DG
Whoa there!
You can't just drop that particular bomb and then scamper away and hide.
A "sovereign God who governs all of creation" (by which I take you mean that nothing happens without God's direct intervention) and "a God who holds humans responsible for their actions" are mutually exclusive - otherwise you have a God who makes humans do certain things and then punishes them for carrying out His will.
That's a pretty sadistic God, don't you think? To hold out the possibility of salvation (via the Gospels) but then deny it to all except those he chooses to make follow his commandments?
You seem well educated, but this moral philosophy/theology is frankly horrifying. It means that any particular person is either saved or dammed at birth, and nothing they do has any bearing whatsoever on their ultimate fate. Furthermore, it makes God directly responsible for all the evil in the world, because those doing evil are only carrying out God's instructions to them.
What sect are you? Seriously?
Every Christian philosophy that I have encountered to date has centered around the concept of free will. One must CHOOSE to be saved. One must CHOOSE to live one's life in a godly manner, and so earn a place in heaven (or a deserved place in hell) Different sects differ on the mechanics of the process, but at the core they share the belief that one's eternal reward is a function of the consequences of one's choices and actions, not on a rigid pre-destiny.
I'm frankly horrified - what a nihilistic worldview you have!
Please, enlighten me on where I have got it wrong.
DG
If you don't have "free will", then you never make any real choices, as all your decisions have been pre-made by God.
If that is the case, then God is just a puppeteer, playing out whatever puppet show He happens to like.
There is no Good or Evil, there is only God - and God wills the acts of the murderer or rapist every bit as much as He wills the actions of the teacher, preacher, or scientist.
No heaven, no hell, no salvation, no redemption - because these depend on humans making CHOICES, and choices are only meaningful if there is "free will".
"Free will" is a core aspect of Christianity. Without it, Christ Himself is meaningless.
Personally, I'm an Atheist, and a Secular Humanist at that. There are no gods or any other form of supernatural forces at work in the Universe. We, our sentience, and our free will, are the result of a spectacularly unlikely series of events, and so are immeasurably precious.
DG
A race car is a tool for turning money into smoke and noise. A LOT of money. Know how to make a small fortune in racing? Start with a big one.
And as you progress past a certain level, it takes cubic dollars to advance - and the people with access to that sort of money suffer from a reality distortion field strength that has to be experienced to be believed.
I had a lot of fun racing, and I met a lot of cool people and got to do a lot of cool stuff, but I also spent a metric assload of money with little to show for it save a website, a bunch of trophies, a Speed TV clip, and a bruised credit card.
I'd've done better to stay in the Army.
DG
...in that I think that it really is your *duty*, as a citizen of a representative democracy, to participate in the political process by voting.
The core issue here is that while autocratic governments can be very efficient when run with a wise and enlightenedly benevolent hand, the probability of wisdom and enlightened benevolence arising in an autocratic ruler is very small. Even if you do get lucky and get one, the problem of succession is a real and dangerous one - societies rarely outlast a "the Great" in their leadership.
And while the payoff from a "good" autocrat is very large, the penalty from a bad one is equally large; potentially (and catastrophically) enormous.
By spreading political power out amongst the people, representative democracy seeks to place limits on the excesses. It makes it more difficult to get a "the Great" in power (and once there, he is nowhere near as effective as he might had he access to less fettered expressions of power) but the tradeoff is that you also limit (and theoretically, at least) prevent the arrival of a "the Terrible" holding the reins of power.
And in the modern age, with access to modern media and modern weapons, the impact of a "the Terrible" is potentially far worse than it has ever been throughout history. Think of how much destruction Hitler unleashed with just 1940s technology. It is very much in humanity's best interests to put strict limits on would-be "Terribles".
"Terribles" are, almost by definition, extremists. Extremists are not necessarily loners; it doesn't seem to be difficult to collect groups of them. And "extremist" doesn't mean "stupid" - they are quite capable of performing intelligent analysis on their situation and manipulating the system to their own ends.
In a representative democracy, that means they vote, and they do everything they can to encourage (or dupe, or intimidate) like-minded people or weak-minded people into voting along with them.
If more reasonable or more moderate people choose not to vote, they are effectively making each extremists vote more powerful. Not voting really is a vote for the motivated extremist.
But that's not all.
Politicians in a representative democracy take their cues from the citizenry; they choose courses of action most likely to win them votes (or least likely to lose them votes) In theory, this should limit excesses because excessive behavior should be met with a staggering loss of votes from the moderates (or perhaps even a staggeringly large effort, headed by the moderates, to remove them from office by more direct methods than waiting for the next scheduled election (like impeachment). If, however, moderates do nothing, then excessive behavior is *rewarded* and thus encouraged.
If you, as a moderate, take no political action, you are disabling the core self-limiting effect that is the major purpose of a representative democracy, and essentially turning over control of your country to the extremists.
It is you duty as a citizen to protect the country from the extremists. The current state of affairs is your PERSONAL responsibility - after all, the people in power are your PERSONAL representatives. They take their actions in YOUR name.
I agree with you that it is damn near impossible to pick a "right" party; the choice always does seem to come down to a choice between the Turd Sandwich and the Giant Douche. In these cases, pick the lesser of two evils. But pick! Otherwise, you turn over operation of YOUR country to the extremists.
DG
Allow me to restate:
The laws of armed conflict lay out the boundaries in which a soldier may act. Within these boundaries, killing is permissible.
The responsibility of operating within these boundaries is that of the military, its military leadership, and ultimately, the individual soldier.
A soldier who crosses out of these boundaries is personally responsible for his/her conduct (as is the leadership of that soldier).
So in that sense, we agree, no, being a member of a military organization is not a blanket absolution for any acts that individual might commit.
But the laying out of those boundaries and the assignation of various people as lying inside those boundaries is very much a civilian responsibility. The military needs to be able to trust that the missions it is assigned are just and right. If the mission is unjust, then those who need to be held accountable are the civilians who assigned the mission, not the soldiers who carried it out. (within certain limits eg rape is NEVER permissible, so a mission to "rape every person inside a certain village" is an illegal mission no matter who orders it)
DG
After reading the Wiki article, two things come to mind:
1. He appears to be getting a fair trial, and the system is taking him and his claims seriously. Keep in mind that the military has to follow due diligence to ensure that the case is a legitimate example of a soldier attempting to do the right thing in the face of an immoral order, and not just a simple attempt to avoid being deployed to a combat zone. Also keep in mind that in a case as politically charged as this, that resolving it is going to take time.
2. But reading between the lines, it appears that the soldier in question has been making public appearances, making public statements, and incorporating politics into both - and there is a very fine line between (rightly) refusing an illegal order and (wrongly) exhibiting disloyal behavior. This is a very, very difficult path to walk and he isn't doing himself any favours, it seems.
DG
What is YOUR premise then - that all killing, no matter the purpose, is intrinsically immoral?
If so, then we're at an impasse, because I make a distinction between killing in defense of the state in legal combat, and murder.
There ARE bad guys. There ARE people who will do evil, and who can only be stopped by a carefully controlled act of violence. The execution of that violence - and the limitation of that violence to legitimate targets - is the purpose of the military.
This is the elemental paradox of military service: that it requires a finely honed sense of personal morality such that, when called upon to execute the ultimate level of violence, the soldier can restrict himself to only the force necessary to do the job, against only the people who are legitimate targets. You are more likely to find that essential morality in volunteers than conscripts.
Sadly, things don't always go as planned, and sometimes there are lapses. But we expect that those lapses will be dealt with harshly and in most cases they certainly are. A soldier who crosses the line between sheepdog and wolf is an abomination and a betrayal of the core values of the military profession.
Even more sadly, sometimes there are mistakes and accidents, and the lethality of modern weaponry is so high that honest mistakes can have terrible consequences. We take all the precautions we can to prevent them, and if one happens, it is devastating to all involved.
If you are attempting to portray soldiers as cold hearted killers for cash; men who chose to kill for money no matter the mission or the causus belli... well then sir, you are so fundamentally mistaken about the military ethos as to beggar description.
DG
Soldiers do what they do because they have a duty to fulfill, and in a volunteer army, every one of those men and women have chosen to place themselves in harm's way for the greater good of their country and society as a whole.
And "harm" has a broader definition than just being placed in physical danger; there is a cost to personally killing another human being, even from a position of near-perfect safety.
But soldiers do not determine policy; elected officials do. Soldiers only carry out the policy of those who have the authority to employ them, and they do so because there is a sacred trust between the soldier and the state that the policy the soldier will be called upon to enforce is right and just.
There are boundaries, and we expect our soldiers to recognize them. We expect soldiers to be able to tell the difference between the lawful application of deadly force and unlawful murder, and we expect soldiers to carry out the first and to refuse to carry out the second. Soldiers who cross the line we expect to be disciplined in the harshest manner possible.
But ultimately, the people responsible for the where and when and how of soldiers plying their trade is the responsibility of the civilian government, and where the soldiers of the state are citizens who have voluntarily given up some of their rights as citizens in order to defend the state, then the onus on the government to ensure that it tasks its soldiers with only right and just missions is at it's penultimate.
And in a social democracy, the onus is on the ordinary citizenry to ensure that the actions of its elected officials conform to the expected social norm. If it is not, then it is the duty of the citizenry to remove the government in power and replace it with one that does the right thing.
If you don't like what your soldiers are doing, you need to go after your government.
DG
Soldiers are routinely taken away from their homes and loved ones and dumped in the places that are the assholes of the world.
Then they have to do dangerous and uncomfortable things that have nontrivial odds at killing them in horrendous and painful ways.
Plus they may be called upon to kill other human beings (in horrendous and painful ways) which carries its own psychic cost.
And on top of all this, they are usually in a state of mind-numbing boredom, occasionally punctuated by periods of extreme terror.
One of the defense mechanisms one develops (to help one stay sane) is a somewhat twisted and black sense of humour. Not cruel or mean, just... warped.
It isn't something you take at face value; there are layers and layers of irony involved, and you pretty much have to be a soldier to get it.
DG
Well then, the time you spend massaging the image (in Photoshop or whatever) to produce a better print result is also a service, isn't it?
... the rates for these I leave to you to determine.
And that service takes time and skill, and so is worth charging for. If you are any good at it, it is worth charging a premium for.
A potential invoice might look like this:
- 5 hours on site taking pictures (includes all raw photo data files)
- media charge for same
- 2 hours identifying 10 best images
- 4 hours color-correcting 10 best images (includes massaged image data files)
- 2 framed prints of colour-corrected best image
As a customer, I get a data card or DVD or whatever of all the raw data files, plus the images you massaged, plus as many prints as I choose to buy. I get to keep all my pictures, you get paid for the time, effort, skill, and resources you invested in the project.
That strikes me as a very fair deal for everybody concerned.
The trick is that (aside from the physical print, frame, etc) what you are being paid for are your professional services and the associated skills, NOT the data files themselves.
I understand that nobody likes a pay cut, but the world IS moving on, and the pay cut of being rendered completely superfluous is far worse than the pay cut that goes along with adapting your business model to the new reality.
DG
...when you said "in the present business model".
The present - perhaps "previous"? - business model relied upon scarcity. If you held the negative to a photo, you held the only thing capable of producing a high-quality reproduction of that image. It was possible to make new negative from positive prints, but doing so resulted in a marked loss of quality, and the negative itself was irreplaceable.
Plus there was a certain investment of time, skill, and resources involved with producing a new print from the negative.
If I broke into your place of work and stole/destroyed your negative, that photo was gone forever.
But nowadays, the digital file can be copied without loss of quality ad infinitum. If I make a copy of your raw data file, you have not been materially harmed - you can still make copies - and all that has happened is you have lost exclusivity to that image.
And that image can be reproduced almost anywhere with minimal skill and investment in resources.
Effectively, the scarcity of the ability to duplicate images has been eliminated. There is next to zero cost involved with the duplication of images once they are in the memory card. As such, the image files themselves have next to no actual value.
What HASN'T changed is the necessity for a skilled photographer to take that image in the first place.
This implies - hell, it yells at the top of its lungs - that the business model of selling exclusive prints is now utterly broken, and pro photographers (and other media producers) need to find other business models. If the automobile obsoletes your buggy whip manufacturing business model, you need to adapt.
My suggestion is that you regard photography as a service. You are being contracted for your ability to take artistically skilled photos. You price your services based on the amount of time you have invested and your level of artistic skill, and you sell the customer the digital data files you produce for him.
I know photogs working to this model now, and they seem to be doing well. The days of the reprint gravy train are over, but people seem to be willing to pay for the quality of SERVICE they get.
DG
While I can appreciate the level of craftsmanship and artistry that went into the repair of the barn door, I cannot fail to note that the cows seem to have escaped in the interim.....
DG
Thus passes a man who truly had the Right Stuff.
DG
OK, so let me see if I understand your post:
Fission is easy, but you've got a finite (and very short) amount of time to actually split atoms, because the whole reaction is busy exploding and you don't have fissionable material in contact with itself for very long. So the trick getting a bigger bang is to figure out ways to get a greater proportion of your fissile material to split.
If you build a bomb with a chunk of Plutonium inside a shell of deuterium inside the main bomb, you can get the deuterium to fuse and release a metric assload of neutrons plus an equally large number of xrays. The neutrons from the initiator explosion plus the neutrons from the fusing act to react a large number of the Plutonium core's atoms, and the pressure from the initiator explosion plus the pressure from the xrays from the fusion reaction serve to hold the core together long enough to get a lot of it to split - a lot more than you would otherise.
So you get yield from the initiator (at the usual amount for a fission reaction) plus yield from the fusion reaction, but the lion's share of the yield comes from getting a lot more of the Plutonium core to split than would normally happen for a core of that given mass.
Am I right?
I confess that I find the processes in modern nuclear weapons fascinating, and I'm flabbergasted at just how advanced the technology is - and I wonder if maybe we wouldn't be better off with those amazing brains working on fusion power instead of weapons miniaturization.
DG
You are grossly underestimating the stopping power of the 5.56 round, especially at close range.
I have personally shot 5.56 through cinder blocks.
You shoot someone in the leg with a 5.56 round, you get a shattered leg out to around 400m. 5.56 makes terrible wounds.
DG
I've read that article before, and I've read a debunking of the debunking (that I don't have a link to at my fingertips, sorry)
;)
But even if we take as a given that "Men Against Fire" is pure fiction, it doesn't actually change the value of Grossman's analysis. Since the publication of On Killing, there have been a number of different studies on law enforcement and military deadly force encounters (Iraq and Afghanistan have provided plenty of opportunity) and that research has validated Col Grossman's position. The physiological and psychological responses to deadly force encounters as detailed in On Killing are very real, and the stress inoculation techniques introduced in On Killing and fleshed out in On Combat actually work, and are being adopted by militaries and law enforcement agencies worldwide.
I have personally been shot with Simunition thanks to Col Grossman's work.
The extension and extrapolation of this very real and very powerful research into the realm of videogames still strikes me as less well founded, and the arguments Col Grossman makes are nowhere near as well supported as his other stuff - and like I said earlier, he can get a little shrill at times. Clearly, playing first person shooters is not turning children into out-of-control mass murderers.
But I do find myself wondering if the increasing lethality of those who DO choose to walk that path may have something to do with the fact that you can practice these actions in simulation via FPS games. Maybe - *maybe* - there is some connection here.
The main problem I see is the difficulty in testing that hypothesis. I can see no ethical way to test if exposure to FPS games makes it easier to kill somebody "for real", given that the only way to trigger the physiological reaction is to put the person in an actual deadly encounter (or a sufficiently realistic facsimile such that to the subject, it *is* real - see Miliken)
I do not believe that humans are born killers; quite the contrary, there is a HUGE body of evidence that counters this. But neither are humans some sort of blissfully peaceful and benign entities either.
I believe that we are essentially primates; that the behavior of a chimp troop or a gang of gorillas in the mist is very close to the underlying human behavioral norms. We scheme. We plot. We think of ways to increase our social standing by sucking up to our superiors and trampling on our subordinates. We are quite capable of being nasty , spiteful, manipulative, and mean.
But when it comes to actual violence, we, like most animals, are more about posturing and blustering about actual effects - and it doesn't take Grossman to notice this, Keagan has written about this as well. Very, very few people will ever be exposed to actual violence; fewer still will encounter deadly violence, and still fewer will encounter well-executed physical violence. Ugly we can be, but we are not all innate killers - and I think it is no accident that those who do kill usually employ a means that enables killing at a distance with little in the way of physical effort. As tough as it is to shoot someone with intent to kill, it is far tougher to stick a knife into them.
So to sum up, I don't think Doom et al are responsible for killing sprees; not in the slightest. I do wonder, though, if perhaps Doom etc are enablers towards more *effective* killing sprees.
DG
I'm with you in that I don't think video games (of any sort) *encourage* violence - as in "this nice meek little girl played through 3 levels of Doom and then went on a killing spree" sort of causation.
I do wonder, however, about a certain aspect of video games, or at least, a certain subgenre: first person shooters.
Most people have an innate inability to kill (save by accident or misadventure); there is an integral resistance built into humans to kill other humans.
There is a large body of research behind this, but you can see evidence in any security camera footage of a shooting. Usually, the shooter needs to work himself up to pulling the trigger. There's a bunch of posturing and shouting and whatnot, and when he does pull the trigger it isn't a proper stance and careful aim; it is haphazard and nearly random.
Even police cruiser videos of cops getting into firefights are as likely to show the cop screeching and hopping around and blazing away wildly as to show a shooter in a proper shooting stance calmly firing his weapon. (Unless there are groups; groups of cops tend to steady each other by the presence of friends and not wanting to embarrass themselves)
That doesn't happen all the time, there are some people who are entirely capable of killing in cold blood. But most humans have phobic-level responses to violence and that isn't conducive to accurate and deadly shooting.
Armies and police forces deal with this by training soldiers and officers on realistic targets and going through firing drills over and over and over again until they are muscle memory more than conscious acts. Time and again you read about cops or soldiers in firefights where they say "the training took over" and they were able to function correctly during the extreme stress of a deadly force encounter.
The keys to this working are "realistic targets" and "repetition". Shooting at a bulls-eye target isn't good enough; you need a human figure target or a silhouette target to create the effect. You need to train the hindbrain that it is OK to shoot humans (or human shaped things)
And what is a first person shooter? A game where you shoot at human or humanesque targets over and over again.
Let me reiterate - I don't think playing FPS games in any way increases the probability that the player will conduct a real act of violence. But I can't help but wonder if maybe we're enabling those people who ARE likely to conduct violent acts to get through their normal human aversion to killing and fire accurately and lethally.
I know that the researcher who did most of the groundbreaking work on the psychology and physiology of killing and deadly force encounters is utterly convinced that we are desensitizing children to the act of shooting another human being. He can get rather shrill about it, using terms like "murder simulator".
I think he is overstating the case; the act of shooting someone in Half Life is NOT an exact physical analogue for shooting someone in Real Life. There's still a pretty big step between a mouse and a handgun. But unlike a movie, which is passive, a game is ACTIVE. The bad guys only get shot as a direct consequence of the player ACTING. and the player is rewarded for accurate shooting and high body counts.
So while I don't think the shrillness and hyperbole is at all warranted, I can't help but wonder if maybe he is on to something.
DG
Examples of stellar writing?
OK, how about the quest where buddy sucked himself into his painting, and you have to go in and rescue him - complete with the game world rendered using an oil-painting shader?
How about the quest where you follow the merchant back to his supplier, and discover he's (unknowingly) buying stuff from a grave robber?
How about figuring out how to infiltrate the Mythic Dawn stonghold - after which the word goes out and their sleeper cells start activating and hunting you down?
It's not the *game's* fault if you lack imagination and turned it into just a "timekiller". I've never had to "gold farm" in Oblivion, and once you get the refillable soul gem thingy, keeping magic weapons powered up isn't a problem - just enchant a weapon with a 1 second soul trap on strike in addition to whatever effect you want.
And you complain about repetition, and then uphold CoH as the antidote? I enjoyed CoH as well, but once I played through the official campaign, there hasn't been been any reason to revisit it - it's just the same old same old capture the point, build the resource grind.
I'm not claiming that Oblivion is *perfect* but it is very, very good. Me and my wife are enjoying the hell out of it, and it is laying the groundwork for future games in a similar vein the same way Ultima did.
DG
Not to put too fine a point on it, but I think you're on crack.
I played Ultima III (first Apple ][, then C=64, then Ultima IV (C=64) Ultima V (Amiga and PC) and Ultima 6 (PC)
Great games, all of them. Pinnacle of the art at the time.
Then the torch was passed to Dungeon Master 1 and 2 (Amiga)
Then a loooooong dry spell.
Then Neverwinter Nights (Linux) which, while flawed in some ways, more than made up for it in others; particularly some of the community content.
And then I tried Oblivion... and I'm still hip-deep in it... and this is easily the best RPG since the Ultima days. There is some absolutely stellar writing in here, more quests than you can shake a stick at, and nearly unbelievable freedom of action. And it is freakin' GORGEOUS.
It's not perfect; the levelling and experience portions don't come off quite the way I think they were intended. There could be more variety in the voice acting. There could be more individuality in the cave systems etc - but those are minor quibbles for what has been, for me, the most immersive RPG in a very, very long time.
My wife will sit with me and watch me play - because to her, it's a movie to watch, and the story keeps her sucked in. What better endorsement than that?
DG
I just wish the SoundMax drivers for my m9700 would stop BSOD-ing.
DG