Retitled: Modern philosophers are full of it!

[Asher]

Originally posted by Darkstar
Asher's original complaint is that modern philosophy is useless, as the students of it sit around and argue about language (and its semantics). Language and its semantics are one of the holy grails of AI (Artificial Intelligence) as well as UI (User Interface).

Um. What?

It's the holy grail of compilation technology, logic is the holy grail of AI and it has virtually nothing to do with user interfaces.

Still, language and semantics are taught in a far more useful sense in the theoretical computer science courses, which are far more mathematical than the whimsical Philosophical equivalents.

[Asher]

Originally posted by The Mad Viking
"Want to buy" = "we can sell to them" = "we can get their money"

Nothing intrinsically wrong with this, but nothing intrinsically virtuous either. Now, selling a new generation of electronic playthings to people every year or two might be very good marketing and highly profitable for one interest group in society. I also might not be a sustainable course of action, but a destructive one that harms a society as a whole.

When you make something that provides some kind of value to society, it has the ability to used productively or destructively.

IBM's technology is one of the reason the holocaust was "efficient" as it was.

But one of the requirements for something to affect society is to provide value, if there is no value there is no impact either way.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Agathon
Your understanding of economics is comical.

A tax break is no different from a subsidy. Instead of giving people money, they just take less away. It amuses me how the right will go on and on about taxpayers subsidizing this and that, and won't complain when the same taxpayers have to pay more tax than they would have if tax breaks weren't given to certain individuals.

It all depends on your philosophy.

Some of us believe we are entitled to our own money by default, while you apparently believe the government is entitled to our money by default.

Whether tax breaks and subsidies are identical depends on how much you view yourself as a b*tch of the state.

[Last Conformist]

Perhaps the biggest lie of the last 2 or 3 decades is that the market does not need government regulation, that it is self-governing and ileft to its own devices its actions will benefit society.

Without governmental regulation, the market wouldn't take any actions, because it would not exist. This should be obvious to anyone who stops for a moment to think.

But the relevance of this to this thread seems rather tenuous.

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by Asher

It all depends on your philosophy.

Some of us believe we are entitled to our own money by default, while you apparently believe the government is entitled to our money by default.

Whether tax breaks and subsidies are identical depends on how much you view yourself as a b*tch of the state.

So, you prefer tax breaks because they make it easier for you to deceive yourself?

[Odin]

Originally posted by The Mad Viking


"Want to buy" = "we can sell to them" = "we can get their money"

Nothing intrinsically wrong with this, but nothing intrinsically virtuous either. Now, selling a new generation of electronic playthings to people every year or two might be very good marketing and highly profitable for one interest group in society. I also might not be a sustainable course of action, but a destructive one that harms a society as a whole.

The market is not an ethical animal. It has no morals. It has built great civilizations and promtptly torn them down again. Blind faith in the market is like blind faith in God.



Yep, corporations routinely fund driving needs - the driving needs of the shareholders to maximize the dividend by next year end...

The markets are the best way to create wealth, and the best way, in the first instance to set prices and meet demands through a flexible and responsive mechanism that regulates supply.

However, markets are a set of competing self-interests, just like individuals in a city are a set of competing self-interests.

No-one in their right mind would suggest that individual humans can seek their own self-interest without any regulation and in so doing, benefit society as a whole. That is to say, we need laws so that individuals don't harm each other.

Perhaps the biggest lie of the last 2 or 3 decades is that the market does not need government regulation, that it is self-governing and ileft to its own devices its actions will benefit society.

You simply cannot maintain a society this way.

As our Christian-based culture disintegrates, along with the moral imperatives it supplied for how we live together, people need a new and deeper understanding of how society works, and what the role and logic of ethics is in that society.

I'm pretty sure the western world has enough wealth. What we don't have is an understanding of how to share the earth's limited resources without killing each other directly or by exhausting needed resources.

And I'm pretty sure speeding up the pace of everything is not the answer.

That said, I think GePap is wrong about computers not being transformative. I just don't think Asher and Kuci have been very eloquent in their arguments. Sometimes, something is so obvious to you that you can't explain it to someone who doesn't see it. I'll give it a whirl.

The internet has begun democratizing the entire world, in a way Dubya could never dream of.

Censorship is dying. A young woman in Iran can get on the web, and find out what is happening all over the world; she can discuss issues with people all over the world and get outside perspectives on what her leaders are telling her; and she can communicate with like-minded individuals in her country.

Economics and commerce are no longer (for better and worse) the hand-maiden of the wealthy elites. Global money markets are linked in real-time. When an nation acts in a reprehensible way, for example, by negating the rule of law and nationalizing the assets of private companies, Individuals with as little as a few thousand dollars invested can vote in a global polis. Startled investors pull their money out of that nation, and the suffering is immediate. Thailand and Indonesia come to mind.

The same thing is happening with environmental policies. Markets of individuals can come together as never before and collectively demand their products are produced in sustainable ways. This changed tuna fishing; the textile / clothing budsines, and is starting to revolutionize the forest industry.

These phenomena could not have occurred without the connectivity of the worldwide web.

If a nation doesn't join the global village, your people will suffer, and they will know they are suffering despite the lies you tell them.

And if you do, you have to play fair, or you will suffer as the rest of the world judges and votes with their investments.

[source: The Lexus and The Olive Tree, Thomas Friedman]

Best post in thbe entire thread.

[Kuciwalker]

Odin, you will burn in leftist hell for that. He cited Friedman

[Fake Boris]

Actually no, Mad Viking's post is full of ****.

[The Mad Viking]

Great post, Oncle Boris.

[Fake Boris]

I know.