Tenure

Heraclitus has spoken!

What do you think force is, and why is force wrong?

I think we'd all like to have started sooner - even better, to have had a proper education, like, at the VDA. I've started to think, however, that at least given a few better premises, I would have actually preferred spending some more time, Brikufa said above me, having fun and going on adventures, rather than being a 'serious Objectivist'. Obviously, there is no real contradiction, but this is just the effect of rampant Rationalism. Thanks for the posts. I really like sNerd's idea of reading around the topic, looking for what other people have said on other topics, understanding O'ism in context. That's really good.

Is a predicate I worry we will be hearing a lot of for several years.

I believe they are claiming a victory over Israel's intended missions of finding a destroy the arms-smuggling. I find this very sad because, if that is true, then Israel did lose this battle.

That may be so. However, one should not feel bad for not being totally dedicated to the cause of turning America around. One may want to just go off an pursue ones life privately in somewhere like Singapore, and hope that things stay stable for long enough, or maybe even spend a good portion of ones life in one of these countries, building up material wealth and enjoying the relative freedom, before returning, sleeves rolled up, ready to slay the dragon. I think a minor example of this is Frederick Douglass, who spent a few years abroad in England, which, ironically, was a relief from the repressive, slave-holding society of America. However, in spite of this, he loved his country and was dedicated to changing it, on the basis that it was only in the context of the ideals on which America was built, including the monumentally revolutionary Constitution, that he could truly achieve his vision of a free, equal society. So, I think there is a case for looking for a country to live free. Those countries aren't free in principle, and probably have little chance of moving towards a principled Capitalism without America leading the way, but one can move there and enjoy them for what they are worth. With the current rate of change, and the way things are going, I couldn't imagine leaving the still (relatively) free England for Singapore or Hong Kong, or maybe even Israel, for anything longer than 10 years (except, maybe, Ireland, but even that is showing signs of receding its pragmatic Capitalistic expansion, which in itself was predicated on the inflationary boom in Construction, which has burst with the credit crunch).

Verily, I did wait and the Gods rewarded by patience with just rewards.

I would say the 'message' is about as irrelevant as the student who submits a poorly written essay and claims he should have a higher grade, because he 'intended' to say "this" or "that". The failure of his ability to communicate that is evidenced by the fact that he did not write that, or did not write it in a way that could be reasonably inferred or understood by another reader. I agree with you that we should treat works of Art as works in themselves. There they are, for us to look at. We might not appreciate it fully, and it might take an Art historian, for example, to point out who these people depicted are (for example, in the murder of Caeser) and what all the elements are, but once we understand what the elements are, we can then make a fair evaluation. This is distinctly different from the man who spews paint onto a canvas and wants us to see the 'vociferous rage' he was trying to express in his exhibition. In that case, he is asking us to attune our minds to his emotive state of being, not to focus our eyes (and our minds) on what is evident to us.

You've given me a very full response here, so I'll try and do it justice. Indeed. I was just stating that, 'Here is the problem', not 'I agree with it is a real problem'. I think that's bettter. Context is the crucial point in deduction (along with, obviously, formal validity). We judge both their action and their intent, with their intent being largely displayed also by their actions. I realised at this point that I made a mistake in my titling of this. I don't know why I chose 'Manslaughter'. I don't know what the appropriate title would be: "Degrees of guilt", probably. Right, I think I get it now: we can differentiate guilt from negligence on the basis of his context, shown by, for example, the abscence or evidence of a copy of his handwritten plan 'How I plan to poison the watersupply and kill everyone'. I see. We punish only to the degree to which he has actually specific actions. A good example would be the gunman who is talked down from his hostage situation and subsequently arrested. We recognise the spark of morality here, that though he was a threat* to humans, he never executed them, and thus, wasn't guilty of that crime. Actually, that's something different, since we're differentiating two crimes here. So, something more like a SWAT team bursting into my house and arresting me before I launch my masterful sarin-water scheme. I would be tried for plotting murder, not committing it, because I always have the capacity for choice? *And when I say 'threat', I mean as in, 'It was certain he was going to violate people's rights'. I mean, obviously, by restricting their movement with a gun, he was threatening their lives, but I mean, besides that, I'm just trying to differentiate the certainty of a threat here, from say, the ludicrous notion that all men with penises pose the threat of 'rape' to women. Is it just the numbers or the fact that there is no difference of guilt between murder and genocide? A weapon like a bomb is designed for murdering more than 10 men, so we might be able to differentiate between if it is set off in a crowd and only kills 10 out of the 100 men it was capable of killing there (which would bear the guilt of the 100 it was intended to kill), and an instance where it is placed in a room with ten men, in a cabin in, the middle of nowhere. I can certainly imagine that a man might murder another man in a rage, and where we could separate his guilt from that of a serial murderer, or from an assassin killing a single man, or from that of a bank-robber who kills a policeman in a shoot-out, from a man who serial murders policemen in a rage. I'm just not sure how. Well, this is why I can't wait for Tara Smith's work on Objective Law. So, you weren't just expressing what negligence-law was, you are advocating it then? So, something like a policeman pulling a guy over who is obviously going to have a blow-out would be legal, under the principle that he is a threat to others? I just don't like your wording later on about 'suspending his judgement' of what is right and wrong. Surely this is a judgement of what is right and wrong? I'm curious, regarding negligence, how we examine, 'Guilt' exactly. You say we don't 'punish' them, but instead exact compensation, but how do we determine that they are guilty? What are the guilty of exactly?

From the following quote in this essay which is a good read on the topic:

So, you know the fact/value gap, which plays out in Ethics, in one of its many ways, as the question: is justice Consequentialist or Normative? Do we punish people based on what they did, or on the consequences of their actions? The Objectivist answer is that we give to people what they deserve, and that we judge what they deserve based off of their actions. If a man poisons a water-well, we judge that his actions were intended to kill people, so we punish him. This isn't a problem. And if his poison actually cures people (and we have evidence that he meant to poison the well, not to put some curitive agent in there [which he would still have no right to do without informing people anyway]) he would still be guilty, because his actions were intended to harm people. We judge people on their actions, because actions reflect values and intentions and are the only way of judging guilt. But my problem is when we come to what punishment we should give him. Do we punish the man who intended to kill 10 people and only managed to cure all their bunyons, on the same level as the man who intended to kill 10 people and actually killed 100 (I dunno, it's a small village, but 90 tourists also showed up that day and were thirsty)? Ayn Rand makes the point that we obviously should not treat them the same, but why? Why should we not judge them all and punish them all equally? Why should reward a man with a shorter prison sentence because he happened to be too stupid to hatch his plot properly?

I made it clear that I was not interested in the biography of Che, but what he actually did. I'm not interested in why he thought what he thought or how he acted (I know enough about those premises) or in his delusions of grandeur. I'm interested in the things he actually did in his campaigns, so you're second recommendation may be helpful, but I am highly suspect as to how truthful he would be in that.

Is that so? What if they make that democratic declaration on the grounds of horrible, rights denying premises, as the Palestinians do? More contemporaneous to the issue at hand here: the Irish dispute (and I'm not talking about the wish for Ireland, as a whole, or as a part, to be independent from Britain) between Eire and Northern Ireland is essentially one of religion. But can any side, especially a side which attacks innocent civilians who call for their arrest for their illegal actions, be said to have a legitimate claim to their 'share' of the land? Now, whether or not their religion (considering that Protestantism is a relatively liberal - in the good way - religion) is a leigitimate grounds for asking for separation, we should consider how liberal and rights respecting their religion is - and, as Tito points out, we shouldn't lose sight of their Marxists, anti-rights demands.

Holy crap, that's... well I was going to say amazing, but I realised that calling it 'amazing' kind of undermines the point: that there's nothing supernatural or magical about making money. You get a job.

I would argue that John Q. Public doesn't know what 'evil' actually is, and so doesn't understand why what Bush did was so evil. They don't understand why the markets are good and why regulation is evil. And they certainly don't understand then, why the actions of a man like Bush, who is supposed to be opposed to regulation, are more evil than those of a man like Obama or Clinton. At least if they don't openly state their Socialistic intentions, John Q. Public understands, "Oh, well, these are the guys who do that appropriation-of-wealth stuff." To someone who doesn't get the wider picture, they wouldn't understand what's so significant about Bush enacting such strict and ridiculous regulations, until we get to the point where we are now, where one cannot tell the difference between the two political parties.

I've read that CapMag article, but I always take those things with a pinch of salt. They're more of a lead-in to a point of view about a subject, and are rarely educational. Where might be I find a good, non-biographical (that is, it isn't focused on some over-arching theme of 'Heroism' or on trying to capture who he was as a personality), factual account of Che's life? Kainscalia, do you have any suggestions?

Be careful -- you're still acting on the principle that you will only respect the copyright law as soon as you have the money to do so, i.e. when it is convenient for you. I thought the same thing before purging all illegal music from my computer. But it is wrong. Just write down what you'd like to buy one day of all the illegal music you possess, as would anyone who would wants something but cannot afford it (and who refuses to steal it), and then hit 'delete'.

You know I still get this problem. I get it whenever I use the search function and I get it when I search for a topic via Google site search sometimes. Sometimes, it just reverts to that randomly, when I manually look through the forum, or hit 'Latest topic in this sub-forum', rather than 'View New Posts'.

Why do you want to keep these people in your life in spite of all this? I assure you, they aren't the only people that can be of value to you.

I've had my Mac little over three months and I thoroughly enjoy using it. This is the only hiccup I've ever had with it. It isn't some magical machine of dreams and wonders, but it does function better than my PC. One great example is this issue I've just been having with it: if it had happened on my PC, and I had to re-install the OS, I would have had to back everything up and spend an hour and a half re-installing (I've done this about 6 times in five years on my PC). On my Mac, I could just Archive and Re-Install, no problem. It's not the perfect solution, but it's better. I'm not going to sit here and get involved with a Mac/PC pissing contest. Just, fuck off. Take that to the wall out back and enjoy admiring each others pricks. Thales: Yeah, it was all the things on my screen though (The specific email I had open in Thunderbird and a few documents open in Adobe). I wanted to effectively put it to sleep, but the thing is, the fan keeps going and it gets heated up in my bag if I do that. I put it in Deep Sleep instead (a plug-in feature for the Dashboard, like 'Hibernate' in Windows).

Marc: I lost no data. Archive and Install managed to save all my data. In future, I shall just shut down. It's just I had a number of things I open that I wanted to read later and not forget about. K-Mac: Besides this, it has been.

Indeed. Some platonists might like to hold that, inspite of the Mind/Body dichotomy, some kind of knowledge is possible. The thing with Kantianism is that whatever you think you know, it will still only ever be part of the 'Mind' section, and never have anything to do with the 'Body'. Since Iraq? I don't think it's anything new, but I know what you mean. And I don't think it's just America, but the whole 'arrogant, seflish' idea of Westernism. I think they partly think there is something wrong and racist in even being proud of or even noting a distinction of value between the West and the East, which I imagine is owing to multiculturalism more than anything. The little permanent protest outside the Houses of Parliament now has a few Palestinian flags stuck up, in light of Israel occupation. I don't know if you've seen that. There was also that incident outside Downing Street with the shoes. Those guys just don't like any defence of values and do just make me sick. As for what to do with these people who claim it's all just opinion, ask them why they care so much -- if it's got nothing to do with anything, ask them why they do (if they do, in fact, want to) get involved with the political system and change things. That's just their opinion. At the end of the day, you're better off walking away. I will say to you, though, in my experience, these people are the minority, so I wouldn't worry about it as a trend.

Thank you, David. I was just coming on to say that I've just managed to fix it. I gave the CD as good a clean as I could and managed to re-install OS-X. So, everything is spiffy again. Cheers.

I hope someone else here has a Mac and can help me. Yesterday, I was on the train, using my Mac. I put it into Deep Sleep (like 'Hibernate' on Windows) and put it in my bag. I've gotten back to my room, opened it up, and it wouldn't do anything when I hit the power button to switch it out of Deep Sleep. I then held it down until the machine was powered down. I then powered up again, and it seemed to load fine, past the grey screen with the apple logo, to a blue screen, with my cursor on, and then nothing else. I can move the cursor, but can do nothing else. Things I've tried: Power-cycling Running the battery down and starting again Resetting the PRAM Opening in safe mode, deleting all login items, as well as the 'Cache' and 'Cookies' folders under 'Macintosh>Users>roryhodgson>Library', as per the instructions of Tech support. I've then tried archiving all my files and reinstalling Mac OS X, but the Install disc is dirty or something, and all attempts to clean it fail. I don't have a disc cleaner. It won't go ahead and install unless the disc is pristine (bear in mind, I've never taken this disc out of its packaging). I don't know what to do now, except get on the train over to the Apple Store in Sheffield, which is over an hour and a half and £12 train fare away. Any suggestions? Oh, and it's a 13inch Macbook.

Would you say that it makes you go bananas?