mrocktor
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Posts posted by mrocktor
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maybe someone else would like your account.
It's available, of course. Just PM me and tell me what to do
mrock
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Well and fine, but then you agree with Iran acting on this principle and attacking us?
If you drop context (i.e. a relatively rights respecting, democratically elected, mostly secular government versus a rights violating theocratic dictatorship), yes. You would also have to drop the fact that *they* are the ones making threats and who's religion demands the destruction of all free countries in the world (i.e. initiated force).
Evade, evade, evade the ugly reality.
mrocktor
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I've decided to quit as well. The second time having a carefully fleetsaved fleet crashed because real life things came up has convinced me I don't have the kind of free time this game demands.
I had great fun, thanks.
mrock
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Objective evidence. By "no need," do you mean that they serve no benefit from nuclear tech, or that they can subsist without it? And you are distinguishing American calls for the destruction of Iran as non-aggression (necessary in order to exclude America from being the target of a similar policy?)
Iran's stated aim with their nuclear facilities is to produce energy. They can produce all the energy with oil for a fraction of the cost ergo their stated aim is false. Coupled with their outspoken purpose of destroying Israel and America, one can properly conclude their nuclear research is intended to produce a weapon. One can also properly conclude that they would use such a weapon to achieve their goals.
mrocktor
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Personally I don't see the metaphysical significance that is being given to sex (and is given in Ayn Rand's work as well). For a race of rational volitional beings who reproduce by division, there would be no sex and yet Objectivism is as valid for them as it is for us. Sex can trigger strong emotional responses, sex is historically treated as something of high metaphysical significance, I have yet to see an rational argument as to why it is so.
mrocktor
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Dyonisus,
Reproduction is not necessary. Sure, my existence and yours is a consequence of our parents reproducing however this in no way determines our goals or values. Values are values to someone. The existence of a valuer is therefore a precondition to value judgments, no values are possible otherwise. Since the life of the valuer is necessary for the existence of any value, it is necessarily the ultimate standard of value. How that valuer came into existence is immaterial, the fact that he exists and must continue to exist is essential.
Value judgments are individual (group thought is not possible) and there is no exchange rate between values of different individuals. You cannot argue that the fact that reproducing creates more people and thus more valuers places it above the life of an individual. You can't do a "sum" of all people's values and conclude that such a situation is "better". Better for whom? Maybe for you, maybe for one of the offspring, certainly not for the guy you have sacrificed.
One can have values and not reproduce, one cannot have values if one is not alive. That is why life is the standard of value and not reproduction. Your line of reasoning is consistent with the flawed idea that "the species" or "the gene" is the relevant unit for ethical analysis when in truth the unit is a volitional being since only such a being can make choices.
Another possible source for your error is consequentialism (i.e. "what if no one reproduced?"). The fact that humanity would be extinguished if no one reproduced is irrelevant. In fact, no one reproduces "to further the species". People have children due to social pressure, due to religious commandment, for the rewards of raising a child (the only proper motive) or due to ignorance of how to avoid them (in their context either having kids "just happens" or is a necessary consequence of sex - in which case they are having kids in order to have the pleasure of sex).
In a post apocaliptic scenario where humanity's existence is at risk, furthering the species might become a strong motive to reproduce. Even then it would be a choice not a "biological imperative". People would *choose* to further the species because that would benefit *them*, not "the species".
mrocktor
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The trouble with your example is that you assume you want to kill this person and you assume that you can get away with it. Yet those are exactly the relevant issues in this discussion.
Why do you want to kill this person? What will you have to do to keep your secret?
mrock
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hypothetical:
4. If I were to do it in such a way that no one else knew about it (I wouldn’t get caught) I would not be putting myself in danger of attack by others because they wouldn’t know I had forfeited my rights.
If you suspend reality (causality) in your hypothesis, the conclusion is meaningless
If you kill someone, you can get caught.
mrocktor
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"Diversity Recruitment" is racism, pure and simple. So you have people actively practicing racism criticizing you for using a tool that can be used (and is used - by them) for racist purposes. That is the situation.
How you deal with it is your choice. Can you live with the situation? Can your silence about this contradiction be taken as agreement or consent? Integrity and honesty are virtues. Would you get in trouble for saying "I use whatever tools are best for finding the most qualified people, I do not make selection based on race like our diversity recruitors do" get you in trouble?
mrocktor
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Doesn't this mean, though, that because of the 70% thing you are killing his defense quite a few times? Well, I suppose it also costs him more in the end...
Yes. Assuming it's a inactive, after such a 3 wave attack the planet is probably ready to be farmed by single wave attacks from that point onward. Well worth the invesment if it has the kind of resources you would haul in by the waves erik described (400k+)
mrock
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Bush may or may not have, personally, lied. He may very well be completely alienated. That the original stated reasons and evidence for the war were a fabrication has been demonstrated to my satisfaction. I'm not saying Saddam did *not* have WMD, I'm saying there was no real evidence that he did. If he did have them and managed to send them out of the country *unobserved*, that speaks volumes about the competence of the military and intelligence services. They do have all those satellites for a reason. Maybe footage of this "exportation" exists and is not made public because "then we'd have to declare war on Iran". Plausible, but this is wild speculation. When your leaders are irrational, it's hard to understand their actions.
That said, there may have been valid reasons to invade Iraq. The regime certainly posed a long term risk and, as a non rights respecting regime, was certainly "fair game" so to speak. The idea that the "liberated" iraqi people will embrace freedom is an illusion though - they have voted in religious fanatics just as their palestinian brethren. The current excercise in "nation building" is misguided to the core.
What is needed is objective foreign policy, something clear and simple and makes sense: if you have WMD or are trying to get them and we have reson to believe you may use them for aggression, we will come in and remove that capability. No excuses, no pandering. A clear standard of evidence to make the decision and the application of overwhelming force if it comes to that.
Specifically for Iran: 1. they are enriching uranium, they have no need for it as an energy source thus the goal is a weapon. 2. they have openly stated that their object is to destroy Israel and they refer to America as "the great satan". The objective evidence is there, they are a threat.
Perhaps a stern foreign policy would be enough of a deterrent to cause them pause (though "this time we mean it" may not be enough, really). If not, it's time to flatten their nuclear facilities. Even if they put civilians in them.
mrocktor
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I am building my fleet bit by bit, got about 18 cruisers now and 10 heavy fighters (well, in a few hours I will), so I can raid some of the smaller planets around me that have defenses. Is there some way in which you can protect your cargo ships? They usually die even though you have a lot of attacking ships =(
Not getting your freighters killed:
1. many defense types can "one hit" Small Cargo ships, Large Cargos can take a hit from the lighter defenses
2. shots are randomly generated, the lower your cargo ship/combat ship ratio is, the less likely your cargo is to be hit
- a fleet of 5 cruisers and 5 large cargo ships, the cargo will take half the damage
- a fleet of 8 cruisers and 2 large cargo, the cargo will take 1/5th of the damage
3. the total number of defenses divided by the total number of ships you are attacking with gives a ballpark guess of how many hits each ship will take in a round. if this is 2 or more, your cargo will die
4. less combat rounds means less damage taken
- a cargo may survive a hit but be left with critical structure damage (next hit is a kill). It would survive one round but not two.
5. get a combat simulator!
Rule of thumb: overkill, set up your fleet to blast all defences in one round, check how many defences can "one hit" your cargo ships, take extra cargos in case some get offed.
mrock
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"The state of california alone spend $5 billion a year on heallth care and $8 Billion a year on free education for illegal immigrants."
On the other hand you don't have to pay 30 dollars for a package of strawberries or a 10 dollar service charge to eat at McDonnalds. If you want to evaluate the "economic impact" of immigration you have to look at it from all sides.
A simple bill allowing *anyone* to immigrate to the USA as long as the person is:
1- not a terrorist
2- not a criminal
3- healthy
4- willing to give up the "right" to wellfare (with a proportional tax reduction? Hell people would emmigrate and re-immigrate to get that hehe)
would end the border trouble (only a criminal or terrorist would attempt to gain entry illegally, so one could be much more "assertive" in border patrolling) and would be a boon to the economy.
mrocktor
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Why should these people be sacrificed to "the rule of law", considering the laws they broke are immoral in the first place? They have violated no one's rights, the use of force against them is an aggression - whether the mob declares it legal or not.
mrock
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Ah, so it wasn't effective. Very good
mrock
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I consider myself a natural Objectivist, in the sense that I lived by the essentials of Objectivism well before ever reading any of Ayn Rand's work or any philosophy at all for that matter. In essence:
1. I had firmly established the primacy of existence and it's corollaries such as causality
2. I had pretty good epistemology: not entertaining the arbitrary and not doubting the contextually proven
3. I had good ethics: judging people (at all, which is frowned uppon), judging people by their choices and not by things beyond their control or knowlege, judging "good" or "bad" based on the use of force against others (which is not going so far as to independently have explicit understanding of the life standard, and leaves open the door to hedonism and other self destuctive behavior)
I discovered Objectivism about a year ago. Ayn Rand's work has established explicitly to me that which already was my own implicit philosophy and brought to light several consequences that I had not grasped. It also gave me the *certainty* that the philosophy I live by is *true*.
I was raised in a deeply religious family, holding firm altruist convictions (and the ensuing contradictions). At 15 I had quit the church (my relationship to reality made me sure that was nonsense, my honesty wouldn't let me go on as a farce). At 20 I already held the principles I listed above, at 25 I discovered Objectivism.
mrocktor
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Hell, his first postulate of special relativity is that physics is the same in all frames of reference. They should be the ones reading up on Einstein.
An appeal to authority is not *meant* to make sense, it's meant to shut you up (and in this case seems to have been effective hehe).
mrock
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Since the moral is the practical, if something is moral, one must surely be able to visualize a practical situation where rational people would want to act a particular way.
That is exactly my point. Since there is no principled argument that it is immoral, then it is consequently contextually moral (i.e. - may be a proper choice for some people).
The social stigma associated with polygamy (and to a greater extent polyandry) is, in my opinion, the driving force behind the scarcity of such arrangements. In fact, in many countries they are expressly illegal. I'm not saying that it would be the norm otherwise, rather that it would be more common that currently observed.
As for Mormons and Muslims, the immoral part of their custom is the dependency and subservience of woman to man, not the amount of wives a man has. I'm sure there are plenty of immoral monogamous marriages in their culture.
mrocktor
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However, it isn't relevant to the question of whether it is practical (which is simply a different perspective to the same question).
Introspection about how *you* would feel in such an arrangement can at best tell you if it would be practical *for you*. It's not thinking in principles and in no way will lead to something you can apply universally (i.e. "polygamy is not practical").
mrocktor
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Nothing metaphisically given demands that you choose a single person to devote your life to. As Hal mentioned, there is no reason why your "highest valued person" has to exclude other people from living with you, having sex with you or whatever.
Obviously, as David noted, honesty is where the crux of the matter lies. If all the people involved are truly in agreement with the arrangement, it is *good*. The fact that someone may not imagine themselves in such an arragement is absolutely irrelevant.
mrocktor
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I'll have access to battleships soon, can someone give me an idea of their capabilities (i.e. good against X, beware of X etc.)
Also, on attacking unaffiliated active players: more trouble than it's worth? I have one guy near me that has raided me twice (unsuccessfully). I'll be visiting him soon...
mrock
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Well the argument is fundamentally flawed in three ways:
1- It assumes that the government can "create jobs" and that unemployment is a consequence of government inaction.
The truth is the exact opposite, productive people create jobs - the government can at best not hinder them and at worst can cause massive unemployment. Look no further than minimum wage and other labor regulations for the cause of unemployment.
2- It assumes manufacturing jobs are intrinsically better than other types of employment.
This is nonsense as well, if you can produce a gadget for 4 pounds or buy it from China for 2, it is foolish to think anyone would be better off making the gadget rather than buying it. I can bake bread, I don't do it because I can *buy* bread and I have things I can do with my time that generate a lot more value than a loaf of bread.
3- It assumes exportation is necessary for prosperity.
This mistake is centuries old. The idea that exports are a measure of a country's prosperity is silly. The world as a whole can export nowhere, and yet it has been fantastically prosperous over the last 200 years - how could that be?
Goods are the measure of prosperity. Exports are only good to the extent that they enable you to *import* what you want (i.e. what you can get cheaper or better from elsewhere).
mrocktor
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Guess luck comes in waves. Colonized three pos5 planets, largest was 121 :|
mrock
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We use ethanol as car fuel extesively in Brazil. With current oil prices, it's economically viable. Sometimes the international market for sugar pushes the price above gasoline (ethanol is derived from sugar cane here), sometimes not. The solution found was the "flex fuel" car - the electronic injection senses the mixture and adjusts the engine. These cars can run on ethanol mixed with gasoline in any proportion, you just buy whatever is cheaper.
The interesting thing is that flex fuel cars are a market solution. The governmental program that instituted ethanol powered cars after the oil chrisis of 1979 failed as soon as the market readjusted - despite subsidies, despite forbidding sugar cane growers' exportation of sugar (which had dbecome more profitable). This time around the industry acted first, and the solution actually works (wonder of wonders).
mrocktor
Humility Irrationale
in Ethics
Posted
By hiding the reality that I am superior (per hypothesis)? Their suffering is not due to the fact that I am superior, as I don't suffer but rather am inspired by people superior to myself. Faking reality for others is evasion coupled with altruism and is completely irrational.
mrocktor