In other news today...
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in In other news today...:
ChiCom
@boomzilla I don't suppose you could finally Jeff us all off the News thread? Maybe to Garage?
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While I think this discussion of evil is interesting, I think it should be jeffed to its own thread. And judging from the discussion so far, it won't even have to go to the garage.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in In other news today...:
@Kamil-Podlesak said in In other news today...:
@acrow said in In other news today...:
Another way to put what @GuyWhoKilledBear is getting at, is that people actually agree on what is good and what is evil across cultures. As long as you ask privately, so the guy answering is not bogged down by cultural peer pressure.
No, I must strongly disagree. There are still people around the world that do insist that blasphemy is evil and, therefore, full freedom of speech is not good. And if you go back few centuries, this would also almost completely cover all the "western" world.
I am pretty sure that there are more examples, but none is so glaring as this one.
Well, blasphemy is evil.
That is what you think. I do not (and I am definitely not alone). So, you just confirmed my argument that good and evil are not universal.
It's just that preventing people from exercising their natural law right to free expression would be a greater evil. So you can't actually make blasphemy illegal.
That is not actually what this particular argument is about (ie claim that good and evil are universal).
Of course, to be honest, there is quite big overlap of things considered good and evil (a "Cultural universal"), but the whole discussion in this thread is clearly way out of this area. At the very least, the whole concept of "selling labor" is completely meaningless in most of the human cultures and alien to them (keep in mind that what we usually image as "culture" is basically just small outlier, about 1% of total number of known cultures - despite being 99.9999% of population).
"Selling" implies that you're trading your labor specifically for money. But if you're bartering it for food or shelter? Pretty sure most ancient cultures had some form of that."Selling" can be also used for barter, that's not a problem. Completely valid concept it all cultures where strangers exchange goods and services. Usually not a valid concept in a family, though - some kind of gift-giving / trust system is more usually. In some cultures, the biggest unit (group, band) is basically a family, so this is feasible. Theft is not really a thing to be concerned, but being "obnoxious troll and backstabber" is usually considered very evil and criminal (just like in most families).
But let's not go there, this is just a side note at best.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in In other news today...:
@topspin said in In other news today...:
@GuyWhoKilledBear said in In other news today...:
Natural law rights came from somewhere. They didn't come from the EU. They can't have, because people already had rights before the EU existed.
No they didn't. They didn't exist before a larger part of society agreed they exist. They didn't exist in the stone age.
Sure they did. Stone age governments didn't recognize or protect them, because stone age governments mostly didn't exist.
They didn't. Nobody thought they did, nobody knew of the idea, nobody respected any of these "rights".
But again, that's like saying that Chinese Muslims don't have rights because they're in concentration camps. They have the rights, it's just that their government is preventing them from exercising the rights because their government is evil.
If Chinese Muslims weren't entitled to rights, it wouldn't be evil to keep them in concentration camps.
Has already been addressed.
They have no legal rights that are being violated. We think they have "human" rights, to our moral standards, that are not being extended to them but should be. The Chinese government doesn't think so. That's why we think they're "evil" and they don't think so (also contradicting the idea that that's universal).Just like vegans think animals have rights you don't think they have, and you are violating their rights.
So you think the Chinese are evil, vegans think you are evil, and neither means any of this comes from somewhere supernatural.@GuyWhoKilledBear said in In other news today...:
Everyone here seems to agree that human rights are a real thing that exist.
No, you agree with yourself that everyone "agrees" with what you think "natural laws" are. The only thing actually "everyone" agrees (and even that is quite a stretch given your anti-minimum-wage rights) is that these are rights that should exist in every society for it to not be a shitty one. That neither means they do exist universally, nor that this understanding was handed out by someone else other than humans.
As it so happens, I'm also arguing that the degree to which a society fails to protect its people's rights is proportional to how shitty the society is.
Sure. And it so happens that we disagree, for example, if the US or the EU is the shittier one, so there's obviously no universal agreement.
The ChiCom government takes a vastly different view of human rights as they relate to Muslim concentration camps than you and I do. If rights aren't universal, who are we to tell them that they're wrong?
If opinions aren't universal, who are we to argue anything?
That's a nonsensical statement. Just because there's no ultimate arbiter of truth doesn't mean we can't have disagreements about it. And if your ideas why you think people should have those rights don't go further than "it's god given" then it's a pretty weak argument for them.Hell, you and I disagree on whether the minimum wage is actually a human right.
We don't. We disagree if minimum wage infringes on someone's rights.
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@Carnage said in In other news today...:
While I think this discussion of evil is interesting, I think it should be jeffed to its own thread. And judging from the discussion so far, it won't even have to go to the garage.
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@remi said in In other news today...:
@Kamil-Podlesak arguably, non-religious people don't use the word "evil" (that part is probably not too contentious?) but use "stupid" instead.
I can argue, it's actually quite simple: several people around here already mentioned murder, which is probably the best example of something universally considered evil (of course, there are usually exceptions of what kind of killing is not murder, but that is a different topic).
I really doubt that anybody would use stupid instead of evil for murder. Well, for a particular instance of murder, stupid might be a good adjective in addition, but for a murder as a concept... definitely evil.
Except full-blown sociopaths and cringey goth teenagers, of course.
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@cvi said in In other news today...:
@GuyWhoKilledBear said in In other news today...:
Your argument is the same thing as saying there's no such thing as human rights. If they're not universal, there's no reason for me to think of my enemies as having human rights and having their rights constrain my actions.
They're not universal (even if we'd like them to be). Doesn't mean they don't exist. There are two ways of looking at this:
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I am a member of a group of people that supports a set of rights for everybody. The deal is that if somebody violates those rights, they are sanctioned by the group. This works because enough people think that being part of that group is advantageous to them, even if it (in a sense) restricts what they can do.
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I will treat my enemies (and everybody else) the same way I would want to be treated by them (and make sure that this is known). The hope is that everybody else will reciprocate. (They might not, and that would be where I would apply a term like "evil".)
If "evil" doesn't mean evil and instead means "just different from how I'd like it to be done in my culture," why am I obliged to give a shit?
Remember where this subthread came from. @Arantor says that it's a human right to not have to work more than 40 hours a week, and that Elon Musk is a bad (evil) person for making his employees work more than that.
If @Arantor is appealing to his own judgement, and not some kind of a universal moral code... I mean, I think he shows bad judgement, so why should his argument matter? If he's appealing to the EU's judgment, well, they make silly judgements too.
For what it's worth, @Arantor's argument reads to me like he agrees that there is a universal moral code and that there are universal human rights.
As noted before, a government wrote this, so unless you're arguing that rights come from governments, I don't know what you're talking about.
You're putting some sort of magical status into the idea of a government. A government is made from people. A good one represents many of its people, a bad one doesn't. People delegate some roles to the government, so the people don't have to bother about them as often. Anything that "comes from the government" ultimately comes from the people it represents.
This is kind of my point. Saying that "rights don't come from the government, they come from the people the government represents" is a distinction without a difference.
So if you're saying that the UDHR grants rights, those rights came from a government (and from The People at the same time).
Except that that's not true. Rights don't come from government. The purpose of having a government is to protect the rights that already exist.
I'm asking all you guys this. The Muslim concentration camps are legal under the laws of the Chinese government. The Chinese are apparently cool with them. What makes it evil for them to put all the Muslims in a concentration camp?
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in In other news today...:
Remember where this subthread came from. @Arantor says that it's a human right to not have to work more than 40 hours a week, and that Elon Musk is a bad (evil) person for making his employees work more than that.
Could we please split this? Or at least clarify what did he really said and meant?
Because I am pretty sure that the basic human right is actually "safe and healthy working conditions" and few similar things. I hope that everyone here agrees at least with the interpretation of "no poison gas at the workplace". Maybe we can also establish that over 112 hours/week is unhealthy.
40 as a particular number is just a specific regulation and definitely not a right by itself.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear no, I didn’t say that. If you think that’s what I said, you weren’t paying attention.
The EU WTD does not outline a “maximum working time” as a human right. It outlines it as a legal one, and as noted, people can opt out of it. I even noted that on occasion I had done so.
The key point is voluntarily. The WTD doesn’t enshrine “40 hour working week as a maximum”, it enshrines “if your contract is x hours and you have worked your x hours, you can’t be penalised if you choose not to work more hours when they are not mandatory”.
It gets murky in some roles because contracts have wording like “working additional hours as the business needs” but this is generally reserved for emergencies and ad-hoc situations.
If I work my 40 hours, am told there is overtime if I want it, and don’t take it, that is my legal right to do so - I have fulfilled the terms of my contract. The WTD protects me from being shafted by “there’s another 4 hours of work for you to do and you don’t have to stay but no promotion for you if you don’t” type bullshit.
That’s what this is about - protecting workers from employers taking the piss.
Consider why the EU generally has 20+ days PTO plus separate sick leave allocations - I gather such things are generally considered unheard of in the US. They’re not inalienable rights but they are workers’ rights, enshrined in our laws to protect the workers.
And I wasn’t suggesting otherwise, merely “here, these are our laws” and that Musk’s attitude would not be legally tolerated in this area. The “40 hours minimum stuff” wouldn’t fly here given the implication that people would be working upwards of 60 hours a week (otherwise what would be the point of talking about working from home? No one is going to debate a couple of hours here or there from home.)
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in In other news today...:
I'm asking all you guys this. The Muslim concentration camps are legal under the laws of the Chinese government. The Chinese are apparently cool with them. What makes it evil for them to put all the Muslims in a concentration camp?
I gave a reason why I would consider that evil in my post above. You gave an argument why they aren't obliged to give a shit about my take on that.
They're probably not considering it evil (and if they do, they will have arguments why it's necessary). Just insisting that they're wrong and that they're evil won't get anybody anywhere.
Doesn't mean that we can't try (or shouldn't try) to convince them of our point of view through whatever methods we deem appropriate. For instance, nothing says that we can't sanction them in whatever ways over these differences in POVs (effectiveness and consequences of such of course need to be discussed). That still doesn't mean they have to give a shit, though.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in In other news today...:
I'm asking all you guys this. The Muslim concentration camps are legal under the laws of the Chinese government. The Chinese are apparently cool with them. What makes it evil for them to put all the Muslims in a concentration camp?
Answer it yourself, first.
What makes you think it's evil, without referring to supernatural fairy tales. If you can't, then to quote you, why "am I obliged to give a shit" about your assessment.
You keep arguing in circles. You think it's god given that something is wrong, and that for something to be wrong it has to be god given.
Demonstrably, I can disagree with what the Chinese think is right without a god, and I can also disagree with what you and your god thinks is right (e.g. when your god demands to violate my "human rights").
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@acrow said in In other news today...:
philosophy is bad grounds for building your life on. Moral codes work better.
I don't think I agree in general (I could waste everyone's time trying to present an adversarial example here, or nit-picking on what exactly can be "good" grounds for a life, measures of "success" and so on), but it's probably true that if you already have a well-tested but still relevant moral code and a society that mostly follows, it will probably serve you well.
How do you develop such a code, that's an entirely different question. Your point is probably that any attempts at taking shortcuts here lead to philosophical navel-gazing and reductio ad absurdum, you have to let it evolve. Utilitarian position as I see it is making it into a calculus problem: everyone's needs is a function
f(parameters), now optimiseparametersuntil everything is Pareto optimal. Which probably could work well, but you have to somehow work around the fact that people'sf's themselves can be changed by means of Facebook targeted ads and special chemicals in the water supply. It's probably best not to take extreme positions.
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@aitap that's hilarious. Even with their clarification that you're not expected to follow "The Code", I'm not sure if they actually think that's a code you should try to
livedevelop by or if its existence is purely to tell the box-checking people they mentioned to fuck off.In a similar situation where I was made to add a "code of conduct" for contributions just to check a box, after rolling my eyes I went the other direction and added a single sentence that basically said "don't be a dick".
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@topspin I kinda dig it. We’ve all seen “you will not do x” lists of rules but a “let’s all try to do y” instead? I’m on board with that in concept. Not necessarily those specific items but the principle I can get behind.
Better “do the right thing” than “do no evil”, eh?
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@topspin said in In other news today...:
@GuyWhoKilledBear said in In other news today...:
I'm asking all you guys this. The Muslim concentration camps are legal under the laws of the Chinese government. The Chinese are apparently cool with them. What makes it evil for them to put all the Muslims in a concentration camp?
Answer it yourself, first.
What makes you think it's evil, without referring to supernatural fairy tales. If you can't, then to quote you, why "am I obliged to give a shit" about your assessment.
Sure.
God endowed each man individually with rights. And since He's not a supernatural fairy tale, that's the answer to your question.
I suspect that that will be unsatisfying to you, so let me give you a different answer too.
In order for morality - the very concept of right and wrong - to exist, it needs to be universal and apply to all people at all times. It needs to be making a truth claim. If it's not that, it's not morality. Just like if a thing is blue, it isn't yellow.
You're arguing, I guess, although at least some people argue, that people should instead govern themselves according to opinions that they're not asserting are true. (They can't, because the very nature of an opinion claim is that you're not asserting that it's true.)
Look, if you don't think Natural Law, or truth and falsehood, or right and wrong, or any of that stuff actually exist, you're arguing from a different position than @Arantor is.
He seems to think that Elon Musk is a bad guy because he thinks Elon Musk is taking actions that are illegal under EU law.
If you want to argue (with him and with me) that there's no such thing as a bad guy because there's no such thing as bad, then feel free to make that argument.
But I doubt that you really believe that, and I doubt very much that you'd like a society where everyone pretended that rights don't exist.
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Jesus Christ! I was just shit posting about space lasers and now ye are talking about the EU worker law and some nonsense about blasphemous content. It's a thread about random news shite that may be amusing or cool. Ye have become that gobshite that keeps ruining the garage funny stuff thread.
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@Kamil-Podlesak said in In other news today...:
@GuyWhoKilledBear said in In other news today...:
Remember where this subthread came from. @Arantor says that it's a human right to not have to work more than 40 hours a week, and that Elon Musk is a bad (evil) person for making his employees work more than that.
Could we please split this? Or at least clarify what did he really said and meant?
Because I am pretty sure that the basic human right is actually "safe and healthy working conditions" and few similar things. I hope that everyone here agrees at least with the interpretation of "no poison gas at the workplace". Maybe we can also establish that over 112 hours/week is unhealthy.
40 as a particular number is just a specific regulation and definitely not a right by itself.
The special of what the law is don't matter so much. His position is that Elon Musk is a bad guy because he is supposedly trying to break an EU law which was supposedly put in place to protect workers' rights.
That said, the right to a workplace free from poison gas can't be a right because some people make poison gas for a living. Even gasoline is poisonous if you drink it, after all.
People who have to work around poisonous gas have safety rules written into their contracts.
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@Arantor Fine. I slightly misstated your position.
The important part, as I understand it, it that you think Elon Musk is a bad person because he was trying to violate an EU law that was put in place to protect workers rights.
Do I have that correct?
You asked me a question about how rights work, and I'd like the opportunity to ask you a couple questions
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Do you believe that there's an absolute morality? In other words, that if an action is morally right or morally wrong, that that judgement is the same for all people in that situation regardless of what culture they're part of?
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Do you believe that every possible action someone could possibly take in a given situation is exactly one of morally right, morally wrong, or morally neutral?
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Do you believe that, for some laws and some situations, it is morally right or morally neutral to break the law?
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@GuyWhoKilledBear no, I think Musk is an asshole with too much money and uses that as leverage to say and do what he pleases, in spite of the consequences that should - but inevitably don’t - happen. I don’t believe, for example, calling someone a paedo primarily because they have a different point of view to you is acceptable.
This is a separate thing to my belief that he shouldn’t be expecting his workers to work more than 40 hours a week. For this specific area I don’t find him “evil”, because I understand he himself does put in those kinds of hours and thus leads by example, and he’s therefore not expecting his workers to do something he himself wouldn’t do. The fact that I think this is a bad example to be setting (especially given that not everyone is like him) is separate.
I believe that working more than 40 hours a week is a bad idea across the board - but I don’t ascribe it evil intent as such. I think it’s a bad idea to mistreat your workers like that and I hope a number of them leave and find positions that suit a more reasonable work/life balance, but that is the result of market forces as work. It isn’t intrinsically good or evil, it simply “is”.
I do also believe that governments should implement some protections for workers against exploitation because there will always be companies that aren’t made to protect their workers and will avoid doing so to save a buck. Certainly history bears me out on that score in this country.
I also think capitalism in its raw naked form tips the balance of people who otherwise wouldn’t, to cut corners in the name of money, which is how you end up with scenarios like that.
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@Gribnit said in In other news today...:
All contracts are considered enforceable, a-priori? There is nothing too onerous to allow?
It's the other way round, technically; if a supposed agreement is too onerous in the eyes of the law then it isn't a contract. For example, you cannot have a contract to break the law, "contract murders" do not actually involve contracts. Contracts are totally subservient to what the relevant laws say, but which laws apply is something that is sometimes litigated over, but the location(s) of the participants in the contract at the time they agreed to it is usually highly relevant.
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@Arantor said in In other news today...:
@GuyWhoKilledBear no, I think Musk is an asshole with too much money and uses that as leverage to say and do what he pleases, in spite of the consequences that should - but inevitably don’t - happen. I don’t believe, for example, calling someone a paedo primarily because they have a different point of view to you is acceptable.
Probably fair, although I can think of two people in this conversation who probably don't have room to criticize Elon Musk for calling people names over the internet.
This is a separate thing to my belief that he shouldn’t be expecting his workers to work more than 40 hours a week. For this specific area I don’t find him “evil”, because I understand he himself does put in those kinds of hours and thus leads by example, and he’s therefore not expecting his workers to do something he himself wouldn’t do. The fact that I think this is a bad example to be setting (especially given that not everyone is like him) is separate.
I believe that working more than 40 hours a week is a bad idea across the board - but I don’t ascribe it evil intent as such. I think it’s a bad idea to mistreat your workers like that and I hope a number of them leave and find positions that suit a more reasonable work/life balance, but that is the result of market forces as work. It isn’t intrinsically good or evil, it simply “is”.
Or what I would call morally neutral?
After all that, we don't even fucking disagree with each other?
That's What The Daily WTF for you.
I do also believe that governments should implement some protections for workers against exploitation because there will always be companies that aren’t made to protect their workers and will avoid doing so to save a buck. Certainly history bears me out on that score in this country.
I also think capitalism in its raw naked form tips the balance of people who otherwise wouldn’t, to cut corners in the name of money, which is how you end up with scenarios like that.
To the extent that the government is enforcing the terms of the contract (including making sure that there was an actual meeting of the minds and not coercion or one side concealing something from the other), I'm on board with this part too.
When the government is trying to stop people from entering into valid contracts is where I see a problem coming in.
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Absolute morality? No. Have yet to see anything that operates absolutely like that. Everything exists and acts in relative terms. Murder in self defence is the obvious example - obviously the originator shouldn’t be trying to murder in the first place but by the time self defence is relevant, the morality decision is irrelevant, the act has happened. Very often this is not taken as a conscious decision but a reaction.
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Every action that could be taken in response to any other action lives somewhere on that spectrum. Every decision has thousands of variables, some we factor in, some we don’t. Some of these will be factored in by some people and not others, all other factors being equal. And that’s before we start thinking about whether an action is moral relative to our own personal outlook or the widely accepted outlook.
For example, you take the view that blasphemy is evil. With your beliefs this is a reasonable position to take and one that is supportable. I however do not have a deity that I believe in and none of those cited by current religious doctrines are ones I would be prepared to follow in any case because I find them all acting against their own teachings and rules. In my view this is not a blasphemous view to take. Is it in yours? Would you consider me “evil” for some value of evil for holding the view that a) all of the “regular” deities don’t exist and b) if they did exist, their views are abhorrent to me and they can fuck right off?
- There are times that breaking the law is morally defensible. Self defence against murder is the obvious. Food from a food store that would only otherwise be disposed of at the end of the day, but instead stolen by an employee to feed the starving - it’s technically theft if permission is not given, but I’ll argue any day that breaking the law should be justified.
The reality is that nothing is absolute, everything has its edge cases and sometimes there are no right answers. But there are often “more agreeable” answers than others.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in In other news today...:
@topspin said in In other news today...:
@GuyWhoKilledBear said in In other news today...:
I'm asking all you guys this. The Muslim concentration camps are legal under the laws of the Chinese government. The Chinese are apparently cool with them. What makes it evil for them to put all the Muslims in a concentration camp?
Answer it yourself, first.
What makes you think it's evil, without referring to supernatural fairy tales. If you can't, then to quote you, why "am I obliged to give a shit" about your assessment.
Sure.
God
Maximum reading comprehension fail.
I suspect that that will be unsatisfying to you, so let me give you a different answer too.
[...]You didn't actually answer your question of what "makes it evil for them to put all the Muslims in a concentration camp". You only repeated that you are apparently unable to come up with any reasons without resorting to "because god says so".
If you want to argue (with him and with me) that there's no such thing as a bad guy because there's no such thing as bad, then feel free to make that argument.
I'm not arguing there is nothing I consider bad. That would be a retarded statement. I just don't have to ask god for an opinion first.
But I doubt that you really believe that, and I doubt very much that you'd like a society where everyone pretended that rights don't exist.
Well, you don't need to believe that, since your assessment of what I believe is quite far off.
However, rest assured that I'm glad to live in a society where your religion literally wanting me dead has no legal enforcement on me.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear we disagree over what protections could and should be allowed on a “valid contract”.
If you think that contracts that are 48 hours a week and up with minimal/no protections against working x number of days straight, no minimum guaranteed times between extended periods of working and encouraging people to work more hours in the hopes of promotion (or, conversely, not being fucked over) to be considered valid, I don’t agree with that position.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in In other news today...:
In order for morality - the very concept of right and wrong - to exist, it needs to be universal and apply to all people at all times. It needs to be making a truth claim. If it's not that, it's not morality.
What? Why? What kind of definitions do you use?Just like if a thing is blue, it isn't yellow.
Yeah, if you have a blue dress, nobody would ever say it's yellow. Perfect example.
You're arguing, I guess, although at least some people argue, that people should instead govern themselves according to opinions that they're not asserting are true.
(They can't, because the very nature of an opinion claim is that you're not asserting that it's true.)We can (and do) still assert that they should be true and that we hold them as true. That is sufficient for morality and governance, without the extraordinary (and even brazen) claim that our opinions are universal nature laws permeating space-time continuum.
For starters, what about Categorical Imperative? Obviously you think it's utter hogwash, and I would like to hear why.
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@Kamil-Podlesak hmm, what colour was that dress again, blue/black or white/gold?
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@topspin said in In other news today...:
I'm not arguing there is nothing I consider bad.
Maximum reading comprehension fail right back at you, buddy.
"I consider $X bad" is an opinion claim. "$X is bad" is a truth claim.
You're lucky you live in a world where most people recognize that "truly right" and "truly wrong" exist, even if you don't.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in In other news today...:
You're lucky you live in a world where most people recognize that "truly right" and "truly wrong" exist, even if you don't.
Yikes! Sounds like a dangerous and bloody world. I'd rather deal with people who know right from wrong. In truth.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in In other news today...:
That said, the right to a workplace free from poison gas can't be a right because some people make poison gas for a living.
The meat-packing industry remains full of large industrial grinders, choppers, etc., yet we no longer can many thumbs. A steel mill, when in production vs disco mode, contains much molten metal, yet our proud steelboys remain uncharred.
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This thread needs more SCIENCE:
Liquid platinum at room temperature: The 'cool' catalyst for a sustainable revolution in industrial chemistry
Researchers in Australia have been able to use trace amounts of liquid platinum to create cheap and highly efficient chemical reactions at low temperatures, opening a pathway to dramatic emissions reductions ...
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@topspin said in In other news today...:
I just don't have to ask god for an opinion first.
Well, I'm right here if you need me.
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Ok guys, take it to another thread please. This is not only not news, it's getting acrimonious.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in In other news today...:
@topspin said in In other news today...:
I'm not arguing there is nothing I consider bad.
Maximum reading comprehension fail right back at you, buddy.
No, that was literally the point of that sentence. You said that if there is no supernatural entity dictating what is right and what is wrong, I therefore cannot have an opinion on what the Chinese are doing, which is frankly absurd.
I can have an opinion, and I do have such an opinion. As you have correctly noted, you are not required to give a shit about my opinion, but the same is true about yours, even if you claim it's backed by god, and the Chinese obviously do not give a shit about it either (mine, yours, or your god's). That a major part of our society has a similar opinion doesn't require that this was handed down by god."I consider $X bad" is an opinion claim. "$X is bad" is a truth claim.
You're lucky you live in a world where most people recognize that "truly right" and "truly wrong" exist, even if you don't.
Look, just because I do not consider myself infallible or pray to an infallible sky fairy that wants me dead, doesn't mean I don't have opinions on what's right and what's wrong. Just like vegans consider what you are doing is wrong. If you prefer the truth claim "you are evil" over the opinion claim "vegans think you are evil", then have it. Still, the point is that most of them probably didn't refer to a supernatural being to come up with that truth claim. (And even if they did, it's still transitively made by humans just like that supernatural being.)
You are lucky to live in a world where people recognize they are
infallible and do not want to imprison you for killing bears, even if they make that truth statement.E: corrected
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In other news, Apple will have to start using USB-C on their shit before the end of 2024.
Bad news for Apple as EU makes USB-C common charger
Commissioner to device makers: 'We're not forcing anybody to enter the internal market, but if they want to do so, they must comply'
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@Arantor said in In other news today...:
In other news, Apple will have to start using USB-C on their shit before the end of 2024.
Wireless charging.
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@Gribnit said in In other news today...:
@topspin said in In other news today...:
I just don't have to ask god for an opinion first.
Well, I'm right here if you need me.
Best line all day. Have a
on me.
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@Arantor said in In other news today...:
In other news, Apple will have to start using USB-C on their shit before the end of 2024.
Commissioner to device makers: 'We're not forcing anybody to enter the internal market, but if they want to do so, they must comply'
Waiting to be forced works well for Apple.
The move from 30-pin to Lightning was unpopular because everyone's accessories no longer worked with new devices, and moving Macbooks to USB-C was unpopular as people needed to buy more dongles.
The same obviously happens moving from Lightning to USB-C on iPhones but this time Apple can just blame it on the EU.
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@loopback0 yes but this way they can’t so easily charge a premium on charging cables because they’ll all be USB-C.
Not that they won’t try to charge a premium on cables with the next iteration of the MFi program but that it’ll work less well for them.
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@Arantor said in In other news today...:
yes but this way they can’t so easily charge a premium on charging cables because they’ll all be USB-C.
Of course they can. They've sold Apple USB-C cables at a premium for years.
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@loopback0 they have? I thought everything was still Lightning based?
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@Arantor said in In other news today...:
- Absolute morality? No. Have yet to see anything that operates absolutely like that. Everything exists and acts in relative terms. Murder in self defence is the obvious example - obviously the originator shouldn’t be trying to murder in the first place but by the time self defence is relevant, the morality decision is irrelevant, the act has happened. Very often this is not taken as a conscious decision but a reaction.
Well, for one thing, there's no such thing as "murder in self defense." For it to be murder, it has to be the unlawful killing of another human being. And if it's self defense, that's in accordance with the natural law right to self defense. (If you live in a reasonable jurisdiction, it's also in accordance with criminal law.)
This kind of avoids the question though. Given exactly the same situation, does a person's culture determine whether a particular act is moral or immoral? Or is the moral/immoral judgement supposed to be made independent of their culture?
- Every action that could be taken in response to any other action lives somewhere on that spectrum. Every decision has thousands of variables, some we factor in, some we don’t. Some of these will be factored in by some people and not others, all other factors being equal. And that’s before we start thinking about whether an action is moral relative to our own personal outlook or the widely accepted outlook.
This part is the real question, though. If you assume the situation is exactly the same, should all moral people come to the same answer on whether a given action is moral?
For example, you take the view that blasphemy is evil. With your beliefs this is a reasonable position to take and one that is supportable. I however do not have a deity that I believe in and none of those cited by current religious doctrines are ones I would be prepared to follow in any case because I find them all acting against their own teachings and rules. In my view this is not a blasphemous view to take. Is it in yours? Would you consider me “evil” for some value of evil for holding the view that a) all of the “regular” deities don’t exist and b) if they did exist, their views are abhorrent to me and they can fuck right off?
There's no such thing as a blasphemous view. For it to be blasphemy, you need to say a blasphemous thing. Just believing that God isn't real isn't actually blasphemous.
If you were to say statements A or B, they would be blasphemous and saying them would be an evil thing to say. As for what value of evil? A very low value. Much lower than the threshold that we should be making civil laws about it. (Or even forum rules or something.)
Also note that although this isn't really your question, there's a difference between taking an evil action and being an evil person. Hate the sin but love the sinner and all that.
- There are times that breaking the law is morally defensible. Self defence against murder is the obvious. Food from a food store that would only otherwise be disposed of at the end of the day, but instead stolen by an employee to feed the starving - it’s technically theft if permission is not given, but I’ll argue any day that breaking the law should be justified.
The reality is that nothing is absolute, everything has its edge cases and sometimes there are no right answers. But there are often “more agreeable” answers than others.
The point of these questions was really to cue up that there's such a thing as morally neutral actions, and that Musk asking his employees to work 50 hours a week is morally neutral actions.
Seems like we're already there, though.
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@Arantor said in In other news today...:
@loopback0 they have? I thought everything was still Lightning based?
Some iPads are USB-C now and Macbooks have been for years.
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@loopback0 given that I have a MacBook in front of me running off a USB-C dock, you’d think I would have the brainpower to come to that conclusion, but I used all my spoons elsewhere today.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in In other news today...:
there's such a thing as morally neutral actions, and that Musk asking his employees to work 50 hours a week is morally neutral actions.
I suppose for some detunings of the moral compass this could be neutral. This not being the point, is salient - the agreement was not an EU contract as it broke EU law.
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@Arantor said in In other news today...:
but I used all my spoons elsewhere today.
I'm in this picture. Most days in fact. And said spoons were rarely used in anything productive.
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@topspin said in In other news today...:
@GuyWhoKilledBear said in In other news today...:
@topspin said in In other news today...:
I'm not arguing there is nothing I consider bad.
Maximum reading comprehension fail right back at you, buddy.
No, that was literally the point of that sentence. You said that if there is no supernatural entity dictating what is right and what is wrong, I therefore cannot have an opinion on what the Chinese are doing, which is frankly absurd.
I can have an opinion, and I do have such an opinion.If you're telling me what your feelings are (which is what an opinion is) rather than what the facts are, what you're telling me is less valuable than someone who's telling me facts.
If all claims about morality are just somebody's feelings, it's not worth arguing about and everyone should do whatever is best for them.
Look, just because I do not consider myself infallible or pray to an infallible sky fairy that wants me dead,
You keep saying this. Do you actually believe it? You know it's not true, right?
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in In other news today...:
You know it's not true, right?
Based on....
......................
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in In other news today...:
@topspin said in In other news today...:
@GuyWhoKilledBear said in In other news today...:
@topspin said in In other news today...:
I'm not arguing there is nothing I consider bad.
Maximum reading comprehension fail right back at you, buddy.
No, that was literally the point of that sentence. You said that if there is no supernatural entity dictating what is right and what is wrong, I therefore cannot have an opinion on what the Chinese are doing, which is frankly absurd.
I can have an opinion, and I do have such an opinion.If you're telling me what your feelings are (which is what an opinion is) rather than what the facts are, what you're telling me is less valuable than someone who's telling me facts.
Whenever somebody tells you about facts, you claim they're not true anyway and go off on a tangent about
capital S science , so I really don't care about those "facts" that you know by no by no further evidence other than "god said so", which is no better than "I said so". The things you claim as facts are only your opinions wrapped in extraordinary claims. At least I don't claim my opinions are supernatural truths.@GuyWhoKilledBear said in In other news today...:
@topspin said in In other news today...:
Look, just because I do not consider myself infallible or pray to an infallible sky fairy that wants me dead,
You keep saying this. Do you actually believe it? You know it's not true, right?
You're right, I actually am infallible.
Oh, the second part. It is quite literally in your scripture, but on the off chance that when the Jeffing is done the new thread stays outside the garage, I'm not going to quote it.
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@topspin said in In other news today...:
At least I don't claim my opinions are supernatural truths.
There are true inalienable rights, but they're probably not what he thinks they are, but rather stuff like the right to end up dead some day (with no specific date or method specified). Theologically speaking, he also has the right to be judged by God (in as much as anyone does). Virtually all other rights are those that people by-and-large agree that we should have.
Some of those rights are going to be ultra-common as without them society isn't very stable; the right to not be murdered by random passing idiots is one of those. Societies that survive any amount of time tend to try to grant that sort of right! You get a pretty strong selection bias.
Corporations are entirely human creations; their entire existence is contingent upon people agreeing that they should exist. No right pertaining to them can possibly be at all natural or inalienable.
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@topspin said in In other news today...:
And now send that un-funny blah blah of @GuyWhoKilledBear and its related crap to its own thread which I can then put into the IGNORE bin.
I am here to enjoy some fun. Not such crap!
