Comment Re:Ethics v. Morals (Score 2) 183
Other way around, actually. 'Morals' -> 'mores', which is about customs and expected public behaviors; 'ethics' -> 'ethos', which is about internal guiding principles.
Other way around, actually. 'Morals' -> 'mores', which is about customs and expected public behaviors; 'ethics' -> 'ethos', which is about internal guiding principles.
And every employer I've developed code for has told me the same thing: shut up and get back to work.
Ultimately, in order to address the ethical considerations of programming, we would need a work culture that supports it. Otherwise it simply becomes another "know which side your bread is buttered on" lesson.
Okay, well, the root post of this discussion - the one I first responded to, said:
Conway's game of life creatures became sentient.
They discovered they are made of cells.
They said "Look, THE INFINITESIMAL CELL is always created from NOTHING. If things happens FROM NOTHING, there is NO NEED FOR A CREATOR, so THERE IS NO CREATOR, and besides NOBODY ever witnessed something different THAN THE DETERMINISTIC APPLICATION OF RULES. How smart are we?"
So the guy at the PC said to himself "Thank you for nothing, guys" and went making himself coffee.
My response was to that scenario. If you're going to stop engaging with that scenario, do so explicitly, rather than trying to sneak in assumptions that are impossible in that scenario just to score points.
Warning: you're just going to make people double down on their previously-held belief:
What if your concept of absolute determinism as implied here is actually not absolute and has limitations?
Then it wouldn't be Conway's Game of Life, would it?
Hmm. Overly-cynical thought:
Convict him, put him in prison, let him start serving out his sentence, vacate conviction based on venue.
Re-charge him in the proper venue, put him in jail without bail, let him stew for a few years. Then try him again, convict him again, put him in prison for a year or so again. Then vacate THAT conviction based on another technicality.
Then re-charge him again, put him in jail without bail again, let him stew for a few more years while you set up a third trial. Then try him again, convict him again, put him in prison for awhile again, then vacate THAT conviction...
I wonder how long you could play judiciary ping-pong with someone you REALLY didn't like?
Not if he gave them free willl, meaning even the ability to do things that were "outside" of the creator's will/temperament.
Can you explain what that means within the context of "THE DETERMINISTIC APPLICATION OF RULES", please? Because otherwise you are making zero sense whatsoever.
So the guy at the PC said to himself "Thank you for nothing, guys" and went making himself coffee.
Well, what else were they supposed to do? They're DETERMINISTIC. Their entire existence is based on THE DETERMINISTIC APPLICATION OF RULES, right?
So if the guy at the PC is butthurt, maybe he should have picked different rules or different initial conditions, right? Because once you hit 'run' you can't really blame the process for giving you its output.
Because those are the only two possible choices we could make here.
Unfortunately, yes. "Over-regulated bureaucratic tyranny" and "Unregulated plutocratic tyranny" are both strong attractors in our economic phase-space. Any attempt to compromise between them is basically flipping a coin to see which one you wind up with - and if the coin lands on-edge you wind up with an over-regulated bureaucratic tyranny serving unregulated plutocratic masters.
Good luck!
So, you are saying boxer B never fought?
I'm saying people will generally treat Boxer B as if he never fought, compared to how they treat Boxer A.
Maybe you treat your friends, your allies, and your heroes like their effort matters, but for everyone else, the Fundamental Attribution Error is the fallback of choice.
A fight is not defined by the outcome but by the effort.
No it isn't. Not to people outside the fight, anyway.
When you are depressed you are supposed to have lower mental activity, and yet some of the most brilliant people have been known to be clinically depressed [citation not needed]. So then, if depression sometimes comes with brilliance, what gives?
Here's a weird analogy that seems roughly accurate:
Being depressed is like being perpetually out of gas. You just can't *do* anything.
Now, your average person's brain is a typical Honda 90 horsepower engine. Good gas mileage, terrible performance.
Your average genius's brain is like a Ferrari V8 - super-high performance, but at the cost of needing a LOT more fuel.
If everyone's getting the same amount of emotional 'fuel' from their friends, family, culture, society etc., who's going to run out first?
Can you please convince ESR to change his name to Eric CloseParens? It's been bugging me for like, decades.
especially when the current method of revealing software trade secrets is "right-click, select 'decompile'".
So what happens when the flywheel shatters at high speed?
"Take that, you hostile sons-of-bitches!" -- James Coburn, in the finale of _The_President's_Analyst_
