I’d say ‘no’, and that this is a category error (like asking what the colour of ‘up’ is).

If I owned by body, I could legally sell it, but I can’t sell it, and wouldn’t want any legal structure allowing people to sell their body-parts. I think bodies aren’t the kinds of things one can own.

Seems like an awful thing to do.

Currently I message people whenever I want, but if this is common, I’ll have to start checking timezones and thinking about when people sleep, or just setting the computer to send messages at the next 9am.

Seems like it’d be easier for everyone to use the phone’s built-in function to go dnd at night.

The lack of oversight is disturbing. We have a couple of places dictating what can and cannot be on the internet.

I’d prefer to no oversight to arbitrary or bad oversight.

Philosopher Solomon pointed out that emotions follow reasoning hand-in-hand, quite reliably.

If you think someone’s stolen from you, you feel angry. If you find out they didn’t steal from you, you stop being angry at them. Perhaps you become angry at yourself for losing the item, but again -that’s reasoning coming into play.

Emotions seem part of a judgement at every point. When your friend starts talking about how great someone is, you might conclude they’re having romantic feelings, because part of loving someone is thinking they’re great (if things are going well).

Even when someone’s feeling ‘just generally irritated’, this usually translates to persitently judging things to be bad - thinking their government, or the kids’ music, and the latest TV shows are bad.

Judgement can be irrational, and the emotions will follow suit, but to feel happy that you’re going to see an old friend doesn’t seem at all irrational.

LaTeX: The Masquerade.

If you’re on Linux, here’s my notflix script to torrent and watch instantly.

Just do:

./notflix.sh solaricks

Wait 2 minutes, and it’ll play.

I’ve never met anyone who had opinions about 18th century clubs.

k

Why all the hate?

Update: I’ve added Vampire (like 90% finished).

I’m very interested in this topic, how would you define the maximal total utility for a group with different values?

I’ll try to condense what I’ve read with some bullet points:

• Utilitarian theory has a lot to say about why this is possible in principle, but it’s not always possible in practice. It’s similar to physics, where everything has mass, but actual measurement is difficult (except Utilitarian theory isn’t nearly as developed as any branch of Physics).
• Actual methodologies typically use Economics tools, such as Game Theory. There’s another hurdle to implementation - we can calculate a ‘fair’ wage for everyone in a corporation, depending on what they contribute, but the actual formula’s difficult to compute once you get beyond about 10 people (or at least 10 roles).

even the slightest difference could lead to large splits.

Yes - every difference in someone’s individual utility mappings can affect a given decision, but it’s not all that crazy once you look at real-world examples.

And is there a limit to optimization for a group before it starts coming at a cost for subgroups?

Yes - and utilitarians won’t add any suggestions on where to take the split.

5 people want to go to the cinema. 2 of them love Marvel, 1 hates Marvel. The currently playing films are ...

Mathematically, this example threatens to become insanely challenging, but we make these decisions every day, so clearly we’re making some attempt to maximize utility, even if we’re not 100% successful.

In a global perspective, the difference between i.e. catholics and protestants are comperatively small yet some experience a large divide.

This is an easy one - don’t take global perspectives when making decisions, unless it’s a question with a super-homogenous answer like ‘should people get stabbed by rabbid monkeys?’.

So you’re saying speach about Ethics isn’t vague, because someone who’s studied philosophy would ask one thousand questions about the situation. Is that what you’re saying?

Right - the idea’s not to conclude with ‘tomatoes bring utility - let’s make tomatoes’. The idea’s to maximize total utility, given a population with different values.

A master’s degree in Philosophy, specializing in ethical theory.

Take for example, the statement “he didn’t deserve that”. How do we find out if that’s true?

Or we can look at the lack of epistemological grounding. If I bet you €5 that some building is taller than another, we can go online, find out who’s right, and the money’s paid out.

Now imagine I bet you that fur clothing is always morally wrong. How could the money get paid out? What evidence would make a publicly available conclusion?

Why do you find the question ridiculous?

I hope so, and it’s sort-of the aim.

Hume and Locke’s writings are often on ‘Philosophy of Mind’ - a subject which wasn’t at the time anything like a science. Nowadays, lots of the mind is squarely under the purview of neuroscience, or psychology.

Utilitarianism was always a branch hoping to involve science, and eventually become law. Bentham - the originator - stated this should be the methodology for writing laws. Instead of vague moral debates, we should answer the single question ‘what would bring the most utility to people?’.

Or it’s like my great-grandmother, who used to switch off her hearing aid if someone was boring.

I wish I could do that sometimes.

• “These people who do Codes of Conduct” are coming to infect your software project.
• “Go the way of your ancestors”
• “Pajeet” (pejorative term for Indian)
• “Uncle Ted”
• Constant Pepes

He dances around the thing without actually saying it, but it’s definitely there. It’s a shame, as he presents FOSS projects really well, and projects like the recipes site are great, but the jury’s no longer out on that one.

That’s right. Should be in AUR and Debian repos.

That’s the one!

I guess I’m not taking it seriously, as it’s not a good solution. Even for basic display purposes I’m looking for something more like mermaid or graphviz, once the basic logic’s sorted out.