I give you Francis E. Dec. It’s the oy vays that kill me, I don’t know why.
Nov 092002
Nov 092002
Feed this beast a few items and it tries to fill out the set for you. It failed with prime and Fibonacci numbers, infinite sets apparently not being its forte, but given “Lolita,” “2001” and “Clockwork Orange” it coughed up Kubrick’s filmography. (Link from GeekPress.)
Nov 072002
The Radical Grammarian, James Lyle, is nonplussed by the following sentence: “Fortunately, this was a voyage of discovery that Slate was willing to fund, leaving me in the prelapsarian position of having mine and my friends’ inebriation underwritten by Microsoft.”
Dealing a glancing blow to the dreadful “prelapsarian,” he homes in on the collective possessive, “mine and my friends’.” Unquestionably that’s wrong. But “my and my friends'” sounds prissy, “me and my friends'” isn’t right either, “I and my friends’,” “my friends’ and my,” what to do, what to do?
The great H.W. Fowler, mentioned approvingly here before, discusses a similarly sticky matter, the proper number of a verb when a neither and a nor member disagree. Neither you nor I…is? are? am? The technically correct answer is “am,” but Fowler has a better idea:
The wise man, in writing, evades these problems by rejecting all the alternatives — any of which may set up friction between him and his reader — and putting the thing in some other shape; and in speaking, which does not allow time for paraphrase, he takes risks with equanimity and says what instinct dictates.
So had our Slate author written “having my friends’ inebriation, and mine, underwritten by Microsoft,” no one could have quarreled. This simple solution seems not to have occurred to the Grammarian. Of course if it had, we wouldn’t have been able to enjoy his perorations on the subject. Or mine. (Link from Jessa of Bookslut.)
Nov 062002
The Red Sox, of all teams, hire Bill James. Not as GM, alas, but it’s a start. To those who understand this announcement no explanation is necessary; to those who do not none is possible. Lou Gorman must be spinning in his grave. Wait a second, is Lou Gorman dead yet?
(I’ll credit Colby Cosh. I happened on this joyful tiding independently, but I can’t prove that, and anyway it’s Colby Cosh Day.)
Nov 062002
It’s technicolor yawn day over at Colby Cosh! Bulletins from the Institute of the Obvious: Romans did not, in fact, keep rooms to vomit in, and Sharon Osborne, regretting not being able “to throw up on [her] own,” has realized that a TV series about her life entails having no privacy. And much, much more.
Nov 052002
I hereby tender notice of my resignation from summarizing his stuff; he’s just too damn fast. I’d rather argue with him anyway. Today he answers his mail on “ethical cynicism” and most of the stuff he quotes is so bad, so far beside the point, that I don’t blame him for sounding cranky. But suddenly, apropos of no particular piece of correspondence, he posits this post-Bladerunner scenario:
And I’m not aware of any ethical system which even provides an answer to a pernicious problem that we will face sometime in the next hundred years, to wit: which of these is murder when done to a sophisticated computer which has been granted civil rights?
1. Turning it off briefly and on again, without causing harm.
2. Turning it off and leaving it off for a hundred years, and then turning it on.
3. Turning it off and never turning it back on, but leaving it undamaged so that it could be turned on again at any time.
4. Copying its memory to a new unit and then destroying the old one.
5. Copying its memory to data archive, and then destroying the computing unit.
6. Destroying the unit without backup or duplication.
Actually, if you begin with the premise of ethical egoism, which supposes an individual’s absolute right to self-ownership, these questions are reasonably straightforward. (It makes no difference whether you refer this position to Ayn Rand or Herbert Spencer or John Locke or someone else.) The machine has civil rights, it owns itself, and therefore nobody is permitted to tamper with it without its consent. One through six, it seems to me, are all violations of the machine’s rights, although which is murder and which is merely, say, assault, is a dicier question. Six is clearly murder, as Den Beste says. One clearly isn’t; it’s closer to slipping someone a mickey. Murder probably begins around four or so. Nonetheless we have already resolved the fundamental question of right and wrong and we’re merely squabbling about jail time.
Den Beste, however, is not an ethical egoist, although he certainly isn’t an altruist either. He’s not a Rule Utilitarian. He’s an “ethical cynic,” another name for which is “intuitionist.” He reserves the right to override any rule and consult his conscience instead. When people like Peter Singer are revered as moralists it is hard not to sympathize with this position. But if everyone were an ethical cynic like Den Beste, with conscience the final arbiter, discussion would have to cease. So it surprises me that he bothers to argue ethics at all.
(Update: Steven replies, asserting that I am wrong because “[i]f I hand you a pistol and command you to shoot and kill me, and if you do, you would still be committing murder. Except in certain specific cases, my consent is irrelevant.” In other words, Steven claims that assisted suicide is murder, which is an extraordinary position. One might, by analogy, call giving a beggar money robbery, because he might have pulled a gun and taken it. Presumably that is one of the “certain specified cases” where consent figures in. Perhaps it is my bias showing, but I suspect there are a lot more of those than the other kind, and we would do better to catalog the cases where “consent is irrelevant.”)
Nov 042002
Jim Ryan at Philosoblog proposes two hypotheticals, in the form of phone calls. This is the first:
Joe: “Hello? Oh, Fred, hi. Yes, the mailman came, and it looked like he dropped mail at your house. Oh, by the way, your son, Bobby, is bleeding to death on your front lawn, after he severed his foot under the lawnmower. Actually, I think he’s dead…. What? No, I didn’t. I was busy with this crossword puzzle. I know we’re next-door neighbors and all, but I have no obligation to help other people. I’m free to live on my own and be selfish as long as I don’t hurt anybody…. Listen, Fred, you’re obviously too upset to think clearly about this, so I’m hanging up now. Bye.”
This is the second:
Joe: “No, he’s still alive, barely.”
Fred: “I have remote control of my burglar alarm next door. If I press the button, the alarm will sound. It is very, very loud and will fill your house with mind-numbing noise. I suggest that you call an ambulance for my son and administer simple first aid, or I will do this.”
According to Jim, the libertarian thinks Joe did nothing wrong in Hypo 1, but Fred did something wrong in Hypo 2. This is obviously absurd, therefore libertarianism is false.
Hypo 1 suggests that it is wrong to refuse to help someone in an emergency at little or no cost to oneself. I agree; so does every libertarian of my acquaintance. (So does Ayn Rand, for that matter; in “The Ethics of Emergencies” she calls people like Joe who would refuse to help “psychopaths.”) But the question is whether it ought to be against the law. Jim concedes in his comments on this article that enforcing Samaritanism by law is a bad idea. We agree, both morally and legally. Nothing here causes libertarians any difficulty.
Hypo 2 suggests that it is wrong to “force” someone to be a Samaritan. Joe has violated no one’s rights, even though he sits idly by as little Bobby bleeds to death; but Fred has violated Joe’s by setting off the burglar alarm.
And I guess he has, in the same sense that my neighbor violates my rights when he throws a loud party next door. Big deal. You cope with the party by asking the neighbors to turn the music down, first politely, then rudely; perhaps in a dire extremity you call the cops. But you don’t file a lawsuit, and the courts in a libertarian regime would dismiss it as frivolous if you did. People infringe on each other in these minor ways all the time, and it is a characteristic of anti-libertarians to legislate such matters, the way New York is doing with cigarette smoke. Libertarians believe these minor infringements can be negotiated amicably. In this sense they resemble ordinary sensible people.
If the alarm had gone off because Fred’s house was being burgled, would “libertarian” Joe squawk about his rights being violated? Not if he’s like any libertarian I know.
Jim says Fred did nothing wrong in Hypo 2, and I agree again. He committed a tort to which no moral opprobrium attaches. A more serious example: If a million children are vaccinated for measles, one can be expected to die from an unforeseen allergic reaction. The death is a tort, yet there was nothing immoral about vaccinating the child.
It is a common misconception that illegal acts are, or ought to be, a subset of immoral acts. In fact many acts that are properly illegal, like underage driving, are not immoral (provided you’re an adequate driver); and many acts that are immoral, like watching little Bobby bleed to death, are properly legal. Libertarianism is a legal position, and to dissect it we need to concentrate more on law and less on morality.
Nov 032002
Stardate: 20021103.1547
Word Count: 2,474
Title: Iraqi Resolution
Impetus: Annoying pro-Arab reporting from Reuters and the AP. And, of course, always, the French.
Thesis: We’re going to war with Iraq, and soon, no matter what France and our other opponents in the Security Council do, and whether the Saudis let us use their airbases or not. Any silly Saudis who decide to wage freelance jihad on Iraq’s behalf will die.
Best Quote: “The next and last US resolution will still effectively grant the US the right to attack on Iraqi failure to comply. And then the US will force a vote. There will be no further important negotiation, and no further revisions. Russia and France and China will have to actually stand up and decide whether to exercise their vetos, on the record and in public. I put the chance of this happening at 3 in 4. I don’t have the slightest idea whether any or all of them will veto it, and ultimately it doesn’t matter…. There’s a 100% chance that this has destroyed any important remaining significance for the United Nations, rendering the veto power of France and Russia meaningless. I’m afraid that the Cowboy hasn’t reformed and does not intend to let France tell him what to do.”
Nov 032002
“Chuvakovv” wants me to know:
I have visited your site and I think that design looks not good now.
Here we are – [link omitted]. Check it out! We have hired 2 new designers
from Indonesia. They rocks!Swap your current design on ours.
Well, jeez, since you put it that way…
Nov 022002
Back early from his holiday with lots of new stuff. A mid-week post when I wasn’t looking, a lengthy discussion of ethics, and that’s not even counting a mere 843 words about the Microsoft trial. So let’s get to it, boppers:
Stardate: 20021031.2219
Word Count: 1,932
Title: Casino Notes
Impetus: Vegas vacation.
Thesis: No thesis today. He’s on vacation, OK? Give the guy a break.
Then What? Den Beste played a weird sort of strip tease slot machine, and some blackjack, and something called Pai-Gow Poker, and lost $500 all told. Chinese uses the English words for “flush,” “straight” and “joker” instead of trying to invent local equivalents so as not to pollute its language, like, of course, the French. (Actually Icelanders are even worse this way.) He hates cigar smoke.
Technical Digression: A discussion of slot machine technology.
Evaluation: A lot more interesting than I make it sound.
And now we get serious.
Stardate: 20021102.1331
Word Count: 2,370
Title: Ethical Selfishness
Impetus: Nothing immediate.
Thesis: No ethical system supplies all the right answers. Even his favorite, Rule Utilitarianism, is “much too susceptible to rationalization.” (Den Beste means utilitarians decide on their answer first and then invent its justification. Since there’s no such thing as “utile” — a commensurable unit to measure outcomes — this is tempting to do.) But altruism is clearly wrong, which means selfishness is at least sometimes right.
Engineering Analogy: Robustness, the ability of a system to handle a new challenge or a high load and keep running. Ethical systems are wanting in this regard.
Best Quote: “I categorically state that Joe is permitted to prefer his own daughter to any other child, and that it is not wrong for him to care more about Jill’s happiness than he does about starving children in Somalia.”
Evaluation: Den Beste tries to get beyond moral intuition and fails, because he asks too much. He expects an ethical system to work like a computer program: the input is the problem, the algorithm is “the greatest good for the greatest number,” or whatever, the output is the solution. But the problem, the input, can never be given with enough precision to permit this. An ethics is a heuristic and a good one helps us avoid the grosser errors. “Act to maximize your rational self-interest” is excellent moral advice; I think it is right and thus am not an “ethical cynic” in Den Beste’s sense. In the same way I think Den Beste’s “Principle of Selflessness” is wrong, and everything in his article indicates that he does too. “Rational self-interest” will save you from many serious errors; but it will not decide how relatively important your family, your colleagues, your countrymen, and your fellow humans are, and no other ethical tenets will either.