😈 The Evil Ideas thread
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So you really don't think that your desire to save a loved one and avoid the possible emotional turmoil associated with losing them are motivating factors?
The desire to save a loved one? Yes, definitely. Avoid emotional turmoil? Probably, but not nearly so much.
You would save your significant other based on a purely non-emotional response?
Of course my response would not be purely non-emotional. If you assume, however, that I would have sufficient courage to try to rescue a stranger1 2, the emotional relationship would be reinforcing that urge, not the primary motivator. Maybe.Once your emotions become a factor in the decision making
This gets into the realm of "it is impossible for any human to be truly altruistic," which I don't buy. That an action be motivated by "placing another's needs before one's own" is sufficient, as far as I am concerned, to call the action altruistic. "Disinterested" does not mean emotionless. Any altruistic action, in my opinion, must be emotionally motivated, even if that emotion is nothing more than φιλία (philia), Aristotelian dispassionate, virtuous love of one's fellow man. That the motivation includes ἔρως (eros, romantic love) or στοργή (storgē, familial love) does not, again IMO, preclude the action from being altruistic. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." The epitome of altruism, and motivated by love.1 To me, it seems there is no action more worthy of being called altruism than this, but some apparently disagree.
2 Whether I would, in fact, have this courage has never been put to the test. I'd like to think I would, but I have rather more doubt than I would like to have.
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If you assume, however, that I would have sufficient courage to try to rescue a stranger1 2, the emotional relationship would be reinforcing that urge, not the primary motivator. Maybe.
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2 Whether I would, in fact, have this courage has never been put to the test. I'd like to think I would, but I have rather more doubt than I would like to have.
Having been a lifeguard, and actually having rescued individuals as a lifeguard, I do have some experience with this. It may not seem like it should be, but rescuing a drowning person is frightening. The risk of drowning with them is real, even if you are a proficient swimmer yourself. A panicking 30 pound kid can overwhelm a full grown adult, and I was just a nerdy 16 year-old. But if you rely on your training, it becomes easy to push that fear to the side and do what you need to. Having the training to help makes it a lot easier to help should the situation arise. I imagine that the same is true of any situation where a person puts their life at risk to save someone else.
This gets into the realm of "it is impossible for any human to be truly altruistic," which I don't buy.
That's not really what I was trying to get at. Merely that, under my initial interpretation of the dictionary definition, it is difficult to behave altruistically toward someone whom you have strong feelings for. Further, given that same interpretation, I do not think that it would be possible to determine if another person acted altruistically. You could only ever decide if you, personally, acted with altruism. As I put it before:
maybe I need to work on a looser interpretation …
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@HardwareGeek said:
This gets into the realm of "it is impossible for any human to be truly altruistic," which I don't buy.
That's not really what I was trying to get at.
There are, however, people who do claim this. I suspect their arguments are similar to yours, although I wasn't sufficiently interested to read just what their reasoning is.
it is difficult to behave altruistically toward someone whom you have strong feelings for. Further, given that same interpretation, I do not think that it would be possible to determine if another person acted altruistically.
Even if I accepted this, I'd say it would depend on the nature of the feelings. If, hypothetically, I were ever in a position to rescue Jeff, it would definitely be pure altruism motivating me to do so, because my strong feelings toward him would be acting in opposition to rescuing him.
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But more importantly than what your own feelings may or may not be, you can see how external enforcement of (apparent) altruism is self-defeating, right? Hence objectivism.
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If, hypothetically, I were ever in a position to rescue Jeff, it would definitely be pure altruism motivating me to do so, because my strong feelings toward him would be acting in opposition to rescuing him.
Unless you just wanted to rescue him so you could kill him with your own hands, or for some other nefarious purpose. ;)
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I don't have a lot of interest in splitting hairs
You'll never discover the secret of follicular fusion with that attitude.
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You'll never discover the secret of follicular
fusionfission with that attitude.He said splitting hairs, not merging hairs. It's not like this is rocket science.
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All I know is, you can't hug a child with hairy arms.
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Why not?
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Children don't usually grow much arm hair.
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Well that resolves the ambiguity of your original statement for me.
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Did you not know the original saying about nuclear arms?
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That's not the one about the missile silos, the pits they put their arms in, I suppose.
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“nuclear weapons are like hairy armpits: we all have them, and they all stink”
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That puts France at the top of at least one list then...
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I just noticed that Chrome doesn't display the cat unicode symbol in the web page, but does display it in the title bar.
If that isn't an evil enough tease, I don't know what else is!
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That's because Chrome's rendering of Unicode on Windows is Worse Than Failure.
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Probably. I know I have a good enough system font that it should be rendering these things correctly. So why ain't chrome using it? Hmm...
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Chrome is designed to render Google and its affiliates, not the Internet.
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You're a Firefox user?
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Yup. Though lately I've been using Edge so when I use Cortana for anything and it fails to figure out what I meant, I don't have to wait for the damn thing to open before cancelling the bing search and either trying again or just doing it manually. I'm getting tired of trying to make both of them work, though, so if Cortana doesn't let me customize browser/search settings soon, I may return to Firefox anyway and just stop bothering with Cortana entirely.
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That's because Chrome's rendering of Unicode
on Windowsis Worse Than Failure.FTFY. (It's Belgiumed up in the same way on OSX too.)
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That's because Chrome's rendering of Unicode on Windows is Worse Than Failure.
You mean that's because Windows font support for Unicode sucks, with them adding dribbles of new characters to the font support. Install the Emoji Input by Emojistuff.com extension and then the emoji's display in color. I still don't have the title bar fixed, though, so I probably have a wrong font set somewhere.
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FTFY. (It's Belgiumed up in the same way on OSX too.)
Shows on tab, not on header:
Shows on topic list:
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Damn, white text on yellow background is evil.
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Not just yellow. PALE yellow.
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I disapprove of this microtransaction.
it is too cheap.
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I don't know why you'd set the thermostat to 25+ degrees either, you'd run a serious risk of being sweat-shamed.
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Do you want to put on a sweater for $0.00?
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The price is right. Where do I download one?
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http://www.al.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/09/alabama_sends_message_we_are_t.html
Disenfranchising voters.
Oh, fuck, not this shit again. Here, go read why that's likely some misleading bullshit:
https://what.thedailywtf.com/t/til-about-the-transylvania-turnpike/51347/4369?u=boomzilla
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[blakeypost] : Oct 1, 5:50 AM
[boomzillapost from that thread] : Oct 2, 9:38 PMYou're an ass.
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[blakeypost] : Oct 1, 5:50 AM[boomzillapost from that thread] : Oct 2, 9:38 PM
Shit...well, that's the danger of catching up. I encountered it first over there...
You're an ass.
Yes, but that has little to do with this. In any case I'm not the
onetwo who didn't look into what was going on and took the word of some opinion writer as gospel as far as the interpretation of what's going on.Their racebaiting gullibility is all on them.
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Yes, but that has little to do with this. In any case I'm not the onetwo who didn't look into what was going on and took the word of some opinion writer as gospel as far as the interpretation of what's going on.
I still find it absurd that they couldn't find less important places to pinch pennies from, like, oh, I dunno, legislators' salaries.
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I still find it absurd that they couldn't find less important places to pinch pennies from, like, oh, I dunno, legislators' salaries.
You must be new to bureaucracy.
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I snorted out loud reading this.
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Oh, fuck, not this shit again. Here, go read why that's likely some misleading bullshit:
I agree No one is technically disenfranchised.
Everyone should be glad to go get a piece of plastic with their picture on it, that they never needed before, so they can vote. Just $36, too., at an office only 3 hours away. Where you'll be told you can't get the the plastic card without providing $75 worth of documents you didn't have when they said, "Papiere, bitte," oops, I mean, "Papers, please."
A mere $36 for the license and $75 for the papers and two half days of work later, and you'll be able to vote. That's if you're lucky, "citizen"; if OTOH we don't like you, it could cost upwards from $1500.
The High Cost of 'Free' Photo Voter Identification Cards (PDF)
Oh, and just to be clear, "citizen," this isn't a poll tax, no sirree--those are illegal. It's only so we can make sure you aren't an effing immigrant, even though no immigrants have ever voted as far as we can find. Yes, yes, we finally admitted it's just to suppress the black vote, but that's not what we argue in court, not at all, no sirree.
(And here I thought you were opposed to oppressive government regulation?!)
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Despite the cloud cast by the Volkswagen scandal, automakers are proposing that they be allowed a 70 percent increase in the nitrogen oxides their cars emit, unreleased documents show, as part of new European pollution tests.
Under the new plan, cars in Europe would for the first time be tested on the road, using portable monitoring equipment, in addition to laboratory testing.
The automakers, which include Volkswagen, General Motors, Daimler, BMW, Toyota, Renault, PSA Peugeot Citroën, Ford and Hyundai, are essentially conceding what outside groups have said for some time — that the industry cannot meet pollution regulations when cars are taken out of testing laboratories.
So VW might still be the only cheaters, but here's the rest effectively admitting they can only meet the Euro limits under laboratory conditions.
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I still find it absurd that they couldn't find less important places to pinch pennies from, like, oh, I dunno, legislators' salaries.
Yeah, those greedy Alabama state legislators are just raking in the money:
Source: http://ballotpedia.org/Comparison_of_state_legislative_salariesNow let's assume that the legislator's decided that their personal finances needed to account for the $11 million budget change instead of the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency (ALEA). Eliminating their salaries would only amount to a $5,998,860 budget reduction. To make up the difference, each of the 140 state legislators would need to contribute an additional $35,722 to the coffers annually.
Try some actual research before you go spouting bullshit ideas.
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Everyone should be glad to go get a piece of plastic with their picture on it, that they never needed before, so they can vote. Just $36, too., at an office only 3 hours away.
Where is the $36 coming from? If you look into it just a little, you can find that Alabama residents are able to get a free ID that is good enough for the voter booths.
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So VW might still be the only cheaters, but here's the rest effectively admitting they can only meet the Euro limits under laboratory conditions.
I think I linked to that article when it came out, and now I forget the source, but one newspaper published similar tests to the Volkswagen tests and determined that the only diesel car that actually passed the emission test in all driving conditions was the BWM 3-series.
Literally every other diesel on European roads, Volkswagen, Volvo, every other BMW model, failed. One BMW had emissions something like 20 times the limit.
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@abarker said:
Try some actual research before you go spouting bullshit ideas.
YMBNTBC
Yeah, I do avoid his flamewar.
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but one newspaper published similar tests to the Volkswagen tests and determined that the only diesel car that actually passed the emission test in all driving conditions was the BWM 3-series.
Another one linked to way back upthread showed 2 VW cars (Audi A5, VW Golf) and the BMW 3-series as the only cars under the current European limits in real-world conditions.
Not that it's really a surprise that laboratory emissions tests and real-world conditions are somewhat different.