Colossal Whale is the only one that looks really cool to me, nothing else was big and splashy enough. no pun intended. Xathrid Necromancer is cool too, but it just seems too useful and potentially playable to be good. so i went with the whale.
I think you're severely underestimating the differences here. The reason golf courses have ladies' tees is because drive distance makes a huge impact in golf. You can't hit the green in regulation reliably if you're coming up 30 yards shorter than everyone else off the tee. You can't 1-putt for birdie when you're 30 yards off the green. It's just not the same game if you're trying to play on a course that's a few hundred yards longer than you can hit off the tee.
I think you have to ask yourself which social axis you want to balance fairness upon. Currently, you're using the gender axis - making the argument that women and men should be allowed equal opportunity to participate in sports. This view is incompatible with Blinking Spirit's (and my own) view that equality should be based on the axis of ability, instead of gender (i.e. people born with different levels of ability should have equal access). Is it really right to prioritize one axis over the other? why choose gender, when ability is just as variable in human populations?
In real life this actually boils down to financials, meaning what's profitable and what isn't. Using basketball as an example, grouping leagues by ability is MUCH more successful than by gender. look at the NBA and NCAA vs. the WNBA. Same thing is true for baseball, etc.
I can't think of a good egalitarian argument in favor of segragating leagues by sex vs. by ability, and i'd like to hear one. Also, i'm not sure if the point i made about financial viability is universal - obviously there would be exceptions.
I'm not so sure that conspiracies need evidence to be considered, after all, they wouldn't be theories if there were concrete evidence. they'd just be conspiracies. I think the real criteria upon which we should judge conspiracies are motive and feasibility.
Theory doesn't mean what you think it means. But that's semantics.
Oh I'm well aware of what the term 'theory' means in scientific context. The vast majority of people do not use the term 'conspiracy theory' that way. They would just say there is a conspiracy. Like you said, semantics.
I feel the exact opposite about not just conspiracies, but everything. Show me the evidence. Evidence evidence evidence. If you don't have evidence, no matter how coherent your conspiracy hypothesis (which is the term that we should be using) is, I'm not going to believe you. I'm not going to tell you're wrong, but I'm going to hold judgment until evidence has proven beyond the shadow of a doubt one way or another.
Otherwise you open yourself up to belief in any random nonsense. Without requiring evidence how can one realistically differentiate between reality and fantasy (which many people are simply unable to do, hence the proliferation of conspiracy hypothesizers)? I find most conspiracies rank right up there with most claims about miracles: People believing crap that re-enforces preconceived ideologies.
I didn't say that we should BELIEVE in conspiracy theories that are unevidenced, i said we should consider those that have solid logical foundation. by consider, i mean give thought to, investigate, ponder, discuss, debate. Take my drug company example. Sure there's no evidence that withholding drugs happens, but there's such a strong motive and feasibility for it.
There's no evidence that life occurs on other planets, but that doesn't stop us from SERIOUSLY speculating about it. enough so that we actively look for it. this is because there is very solid logic regarding the possibility of such life. I think conspiracy theories should receive the same treatment. Obviously there are some that don't warrant further investigation because they're REALLY stupid (i.e. reptilian creatures impersonating politicians, etc), but others sound pretty feasible to me.
I have actually heard it from not so uneducated people that big pharmacy companies do actually have a cure for aids but they are not releasing it the public because they want a bigger pay day.
Well it's HIGHLY likely that drug companies do hold out on releasing drugs in order to maintain profitability on their existing lines. There's no sense in competing with yourself. Pretend you spent tens of millions of dollars developing and manufacturing antiretroviral drugs, and then your researchers discovered a better drug. Why on earth would you release the new one, when your current line is profitable? it's much better to hold on to your new discovery, so when a competitor releases their version, you have a trump card.
I don't think that's a conspiracy, that's just good (and unfortunate) business sense. Technology companies do this all the time, and so do hackers. The recent iphone jailbreak is a perfect example: the team that made it had a vulnerability, but chose to hold onto it (not release) until apple released their newest OS. Same concept. But conspiracies surely do exist, especially where they would be profitable. The only way we're ever going to really know about them is through whistleblowers. Hopefully we get to find out what's in Wikileaks' insurance file. other conspiracy theories are true though. companies and countries pay armies of people on computers to support or defend them online. Israel does this to a large degree. It's called astroturfing, and it definitely exists. That is a very real conspiracy.
I'm not so sure that conspiracies need evidence to be considered, after all, they wouldn't be theories if there were concrete evidence. they'd just be conspiracies. I think the real criteria upon which we should judge conspiracies are motive and feasibility.
Because the objective moral authority (In my case, God) has already declared that free will is a thing, and people have the right and freedom to disagree with even objective moral facts.
I hate to be that guy that tells people their religions are screwy, but come on man. you've got to have some hard core cognitive dissonance to swallow that one. If that's true, what's the point of education? or debate? why bother trying to change peoples' minds about anything, or even to make them understand your viewpoint? If you're objectively right about something (let's say, the pythagorean theorem), and you want people to be educated, you should educate them. same concept. you wouldn't tolerate someone teaching elementary school, telling kids "OK kids, the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of both sides times pi".
Everyone knows it is objectively morally true that murder is wrong.
nope. not true. that is very far from an objective truth. from a population perspective, we need to murder each other more, or human life won't be sustainable (subject = population). from the murderer's perspective, murder was morally awesome (subject = murderer). from the murderee's perspective, yeah, murder sucks (subject == dead guy). different subjects, different viewpoints. the DEFINITION of subjectivity. maybe if you said "murder is objectively detremental to the person who got murdered" I'd buy it.
Someone can totally disagree with that and suggest that they believe murder should be allowed in the cases of proven rapists and pedophiles. And they can argue that belief even though we objectively know it is wrong. They are allowed to believe that. So long as they do not act on any thoughts that would bring harm to others.
the fact that you tried to convince me otherwise, however, is ample evidence that you DO want to 'educate' people to your own moral system, as i mentioned before.
I don't see why this is such a new or baffling concept.
of course you don't, you believe in an objective moral code the part you're missing (from my viewpoint) is WHY you let people be wrong. what does that accomplish? where's the logic behind it? you'll say god, and that's cool for you to believe that. it's just not something i can ever accept without concrete logic behind it.
Why not lock people up for lying? If anything, lying is worse, because it presumes that the speaker itself knows that they are incorrect. However, in this case, we are presuming that the speakers (by and large) do believe what they are saying is correct.
So objectively, why not lock people up for lying? Besides the fact that we would all end up behind bars and we would all die off?
Simply because I do not have any objective authority to do so.
we do lock people up for lying, when damage is caused. see: breach of contract, conspiracy (as criminal examples) and then a plethora of civil examples (many lawsuits are over lying).
but what you're saying is, that even if you had an objective definition of morality (as Quirkiness101 suggested), an argument against censorship is that you lack the authority to censor people? on what basis do you lack that authority? said another way, what is the practical reason that you shouldn't have the authority to silence people that are objectively morally wrong?
please keep in mind that this isn't my actual argument (i'm firmly in the second camp from my previous post). I'm just saying that it's hard to legitimize a lack of authoritarian control when you have (or impose) absolute moral truths. Objectivity is all that separates education from indoctrination - why wouldn't you teach those people who are morally different?
regarding the topic of authority, the question in the OP wasn't whether YOU should censor anybody, its whether institutions that HAVE such authority should censor.
Well your analysis is slightly wrong because of the fact that I DO believe in an objective moral code as taught in the Bible through God and Jesus. But I don't believe that we should have authoritarian restrictions on freedom of speech and censorship of things that are deemed offensive but do not qualify as hate speech.
As i pointed out above, this philosophy isn't internally consistent. think about it this way: why bother letting other people voice opinions that are blatantly wrong (remember, your morality is objective here)? What is the reason for giving them that freedom? If it's anything about 'everybody's opinion is important', your morality isn't objective at all. I guess you could argue that people are happier when they can voice their own blatantly wrong opinions, but in the context of hate speech, your own happiness is trivial compared to the damage you could be causing to others by violating the objective moral standard.
"I hate the gays and we should kill them all" is Hate Speech due to it's influence over people to commit violent acts against a specific group.
how terrifyingly paternalistic. if a person hears such 'hate speech' and decides to commit a crime based on it, that's their own choice as a free individual. I should be allowed to say as many times as I want "kill all albinos, genocide them, shoot them with crossbows". If a person decides to do that based off my idiotic ramblings, that's on them.
The biggest problem I've seen in this thread so far is that the opposition on the i'll say "Liberal" point of view wants the second quote I just said to be quantified as hate speech because it says anything negative AT ALL about a person's gay lifestyle. Which is wanting forced acceptance, not tolerance of the act of gay sex as morally right and not sinful in any way. For some reason, it is considered hateful and bigoted to hold any other position other than "Gay sex is O.K. by me".
that's because those 'liberals' (not the best label here) are the authoritarians i was talking about. they (like you) have a set standard of moral codes which they believe to be objective. they want the law to respect those morals, and silence speech that transgresses them. "i'm creeped out by gay people because a sky wizard told me that it's wrong", according to them, is hurtful to those gay people. so you shouldn't be able to say it. it has nothing to do with tolerance or how well you put up with folks different from yourself, it has to do with how many hoops you jump through so you don't get anybody's panties/jockstrap in a twist.
hilarious example: in my last sentence, i added jockstrap so that my joke wouldn't be construed as sexist. sexism is against the dogmatic moral code of those whom you label "liberals", and i censored myself in order to avoid the aforementioned twisting of undergarments.
There is objective morality, however the advantages of maintaining freedom outweigh the costs of restricting certain "wrong" actions.
that's a viable position to take. I haven't seen anybody make that claim in the thread yet though. I think an authoritarian's criticism of that would be that if there is objective morality, why would we bother allowing people to voice an opinion outside of it? if we know our viewpoint is true, why bother allowing people to express opposing ideas?
in other words, why not practice censorship, if we're only censoring things we know to be wrong?
So far, it seems like there's two camps in this thread.
definition crap:
i'm defining 'morals' here as the stuff we don't agree on - not core morals. for example, a core moral would be that laws should treat everyone equally. the morals i'm talking about below would be, "is it ok to be gay" or "the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many" or "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need"
1. these people believe that their version of morality is immutable, and that all others must subscribe to their morality. This notion of morality is the basis for defining hate speech. speech that qualifies as hate speech under this regime should be censored. This is an authoritarian perspective.
2. these people believe that morality is subjective, and as such, no universal code of morality can be defined. for this reason, each individual is entitled to form (or inherit.....) their own opinions, and to express those opinions using their freedom of speech. this philosophy holds that nothing should be censored (regarding the morals in question). This is a libertarian perspective.
So I think what's really going on here is a debate about whether or not everyone should have a standardized (authorized) moral code. Should we all accept gay people? Should we all subscribe to the ideology that social welfare programs are in the best interest of the local or regional population? et cetera et cetera forever. What I think we really need to move this debate forward is for someone to state an OBJECTIVE reason that their philosophy is better than someone else's. for example,
having a standardized moral code is in our best interest because we need to make minority people comfortable in our civilization. If we don't have a standard moral code, the moral code of the majority could shift, and minorities could be persecuted.
This argument has enormous historical precedent. It is an authoritarian argument, from a 'negative liberty' perspective. But it has a counterargument:
regardless of whether the majority's morals are insulting or hurtful to minorities, part of living in a free society is having a thick skin. sticks and stones can break my bones, et cetera. if you want freedoms, you have to be prepared for other people to exercise their own.
this is the libertarian viewpoint argument, and is from a 'positive liberty' perspective.
(in case it wasn't obvious, i abhor censorship EXCEPT in the case where speech is demonstrably FALSE or UNGROUNDED, i.e. teaching creationism, or impersonating a soldier to get benefits, lying in court testimony, or false advertising).
I guess you prove the point . . . you hate it except when it is supporting what you believe in . . . like evolution.
there's a profound difference between allowing all voices to be heard, and giving all voices equal weight. censorship can be either - complete, or partial. suppressing the expression of an idea is still censorship. in the case you mentioned, teaching science requires substantial evidence (see: several centuries of epistemology).
also 'i hate it except when it benefits me' is human nature, it's why we have laws that are (hopefully) impartial to all that crap. we're all flawed, man.
Wow, we've taken this social justice BS way too far. I mean, it's great to be tolerant of other people, but part of living in a free society is having a thick enough skin to survive.
I teach at the university level, and I had a student last semester who wrote on my evaluation form, "As a WHITE MALE, you need to give more attention to women and minorities in the classroom". None of my other students felt this way, but I take any criticism I receive seriously, and put thought into this response. Anyways, the reason I bring this up is because I feel very singled out, because being a white male is not something i can control. I was born as a white male, and I don't think it's anybody's right to say that my actions should be dependent on factors outside my control, and i shouldn't have to censor myself just because of my race or sex.
anyways my point is that if you want to live in a free society, you have to respect that EVERYONE has rights, and some of those will infringe on yours. people have the right to speak, you might get offended (per my example above). people have the right to vote, your candidate might not win. people have the right to bear arms, folks are going to get shot.
living in a free society demands that we all approach these things RATIONALLY, and realize that individuals have to be mature in order to live in such a society (especially when in close proximity). Unfortunately this isn't the status quo, and people are grossly misinformed regarding concepts of justice, equality, and entitlement. Or maybe they choose not to think of them (cognitive dissonance). Regardless people need to grow the heck up.
My student said something hurtful to me, but i'm not going to sue them or anything because i'm a grown man, who understands that "that's just like, your opinion, man".
(in case it wasn't obvious, i abhor censorship EXCEPT in the case where speech is demonstrably FALSE or UNGROUNDED, i.e. teaching creationism, or impersonating a soldier to get benefits, lying in court testimony, or false advertising).
this is fantastic. men and women in the military definitely deserve priority in these kinds of treatments. I hope that by continuing to perform such transplants, technology reaches a level where we can grow a new arm from a living person's DNA.
i'm pretty sure nobody is actually going to clone a neanderthal, even if the technology does exist.
that said, i think we as a society need to get past the notion that human life is somehow 'sacred'. we're not really that special, especially on an individual level. there are over 7 billion of us. get over yourselves.
Next: A commander with abilities based on a six-sided dice.
Slorgath, the Gambling Goblin 2RR
Legendary Creature - Goblin Rogue
Slorgath has haste as long as an opponent controls 2 or more creatures. t:roll a six sided die. Slorgath deals that much damage to target creature.
3/3
next: a commander that makes your opponents afraid to play mana rocks like sol ring or mana crypt or thran dynamo in their decks.
Just because a company provides insurance that covers abortion, it doesn't mean that the company is somehow endorsing abortion. It is 100% the employee's decision whether or not to use abortion. The employer gives the employee money that they could also use on plan B or other abortions, is that against the employer's moral values as well?
the logic just doesn't add up. This smells to me more like an excuse to hate obamacare than a real issue that the employers have with their morality.
I think you have to ask yourself which social axis you want to balance fairness upon. Currently, you're using the gender axis - making the argument that women and men should be allowed equal opportunity to participate in sports. This view is incompatible with Blinking Spirit's (and my own) view that equality should be based on the axis of ability, instead of gender (i.e. people born with different levels of ability should have equal access). Is it really right to prioritize one axis over the other? why choose gender, when ability is just as variable in human populations?
In real life this actually boils down to financials, meaning what's profitable and what isn't. Using basketball as an example, grouping leagues by ability is MUCH more successful than by gender. look at the NBA and NCAA vs. the WNBA. Same thing is true for baseball, etc.
I can't think of a good egalitarian argument in favor of segragating leagues by sex vs. by ability, and i'd like to hear one. Also, i'm not sure if the point i made about financial viability is universal - obviously there would be exceptions.
Oh I'm well aware of what the term 'theory' means in scientific context. The vast majority of people do not use the term 'conspiracy theory' that way. They would just say there is a conspiracy. Like you said, semantics.
I didn't say that we should BELIEVE in conspiracy theories that are unevidenced, i said we should consider those that have solid logical foundation. by consider, i mean give thought to, investigate, ponder, discuss, debate. Take my drug company example. Sure there's no evidence that withholding drugs happens, but there's such a strong motive and feasibility for it.
There's no evidence that life occurs on other planets, but that doesn't stop us from SERIOUSLY speculating about it. enough so that we actively look for it. this is because there is very solid logic regarding the possibility of such life. I think conspiracy theories should receive the same treatment. Obviously there are some that don't warrant further investigation because they're REALLY stupid (i.e. reptilian creatures impersonating politicians, etc), but others sound pretty feasible to me.
Well it's HIGHLY likely that drug companies do hold out on releasing drugs in order to maintain profitability on their existing lines. There's no sense in competing with yourself. Pretend you spent tens of millions of dollars developing and manufacturing antiretroviral drugs, and then your researchers discovered a better drug. Why on earth would you release the new one, when your current line is profitable? it's much better to hold on to your new discovery, so when a competitor releases their version, you have a trump card.
I don't think that's a conspiracy, that's just good (and unfortunate) business sense. Technology companies do this all the time, and so do hackers. The recent iphone jailbreak is a perfect example: the team that made it had a vulnerability, but chose to hold onto it (not release) until apple released their newest OS. Same concept. But conspiracies surely do exist, especially where they would be profitable. The only way we're ever going to really know about them is through whistleblowers. Hopefully we get to find out what's in Wikileaks' insurance file. other conspiracy theories are true though. companies and countries pay armies of people on computers to support or defend them online. Israel does this to a large degree. It's called astroturfing, and it definitely exists. That is a very real conspiracy.
I'm not so sure that conspiracies need evidence to be considered, after all, they wouldn't be theories if there were concrete evidence. they'd just be conspiracies. I think the real criteria upon which we should judge conspiracies are motive and feasibility.
I hate to be that guy that tells people their religions are screwy, but come on man. you've got to have some hard core cognitive dissonance to swallow that one. If that's true, what's the point of education? or debate? why bother trying to change peoples' minds about anything, or even to make them understand your viewpoint? If you're objectively right about something (let's say, the pythagorean theorem), and you want people to be educated, you should educate them. same concept. you wouldn't tolerate someone teaching elementary school, telling kids "OK kids, the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of both sides times pi".
nope. not true. that is very far from an objective truth. from a population perspective, we need to murder each other more, or human life won't be sustainable (subject = population). from the murderer's perspective, murder was morally awesome (subject = murderer). from the murderee's perspective, yeah, murder sucks (subject == dead guy). different subjects, different viewpoints. the DEFINITION of subjectivity. maybe if you said "murder is objectively detremental to the person who got murdered" I'd buy it.
the fact that you tried to convince me otherwise, however, is ample evidence that you DO want to 'educate' people to your own moral system, as i mentioned before.
of course you don't, you believe in an objective moral code
we do lock people up for lying, when damage is caused. see: breach of contract, conspiracy (as criminal examples) and then a plethora of civil examples (many lawsuits are over lying).
but what you're saying is, that even if you had an objective definition of morality (as Quirkiness101 suggested), an argument against censorship is that you lack the authority to censor people? on what basis do you lack that authority? said another way, what is the practical reason that you shouldn't have the authority to silence people that are objectively morally wrong?
please keep in mind that this isn't my actual argument (i'm firmly in the second camp from my previous post). I'm just saying that it's hard to legitimize a lack of authoritarian control when you have (or impose) absolute moral truths. Objectivity is all that separates education from indoctrination - why wouldn't you teach those people who are morally different?
regarding the topic of authority, the question in the OP wasn't whether YOU should censor anybody, its whether institutions that HAVE such authority should censor.
As i pointed out above, this philosophy isn't internally consistent. think about it this way: why bother letting other people voice opinions that are blatantly wrong (remember, your morality is objective here)? What is the reason for giving them that freedom? If it's anything about 'everybody's opinion is important', your morality isn't objective at all. I guess you could argue that people are happier when they can voice their own blatantly wrong opinions, but in the context of hate speech, your own happiness is trivial compared to the damage you could be causing to others by violating the objective moral standard.
how terrifyingly paternalistic. if a person hears such 'hate speech' and decides to commit a crime based on it, that's their own choice as a free individual. I should be allowed to say as many times as I want "kill all albinos, genocide them, shoot them with crossbows". If a person decides to do that based off my idiotic ramblings, that's on them.
that's because those 'liberals' (not the best label here) are the authoritarians i was talking about. they (like you) have a set standard of moral codes which they believe to be objective. they want the law to respect those morals, and silence speech that transgresses them. "i'm creeped out by gay people because a sky wizard told me that it's wrong", according to them, is hurtful to those gay people. so you shouldn't be able to say it. it has nothing to do with tolerance or how well you put up with folks different from yourself, it has to do with how many hoops you jump through so you don't get anybody's panties/jockstrap in a twist.
hilarious example: in my last sentence, i added jockstrap so that my joke wouldn't be construed as sexist. sexism is against the dogmatic moral code of those whom you label "liberals", and i censored myself in order to avoid the aforementioned twisting of undergarments.
that's a viable position to take. I haven't seen anybody make that claim in the thread yet though. I think an authoritarian's criticism of that would be that if there is objective morality, why would we bother allowing people to voice an opinion outside of it? if we know our viewpoint is true, why bother allowing people to express opposing ideas?
in other words, why not practice censorship, if we're only censoring things we know to be wrong?
definition crap:
1. these people believe that their version of morality is immutable, and that all others must subscribe to their morality. This notion of morality is the basis for defining hate speech. speech that qualifies as hate speech under this regime should be censored. This is an authoritarian perspective.
2. these people believe that morality is subjective, and as such, no universal code of morality can be defined. for this reason, each individual is entitled to form (or inherit.....) their own opinions, and to express those opinions using their freedom of speech. this philosophy holds that nothing should be censored (regarding the morals in question). This is a libertarian perspective.
So I think what's really going on here is a debate about whether or not everyone should have a standardized (authorized) moral code. Should we all accept gay people? Should we all subscribe to the ideology that social welfare programs are in the best interest of the local or regional population? et cetera et cetera forever. What I think we really need to move this debate forward is for someone to state an OBJECTIVE reason that their philosophy is better than someone else's. for example,
This argument has enormous historical precedent. It is an authoritarian argument, from a 'negative liberty' perspective. But it has a counterargument:
this is the libertarian viewpoint argument, and is from a 'positive liberty' perspective.
i just thought i'd clarify what's going on here.
there's a profound difference between allowing all voices to be heard, and giving all voices equal weight. censorship can be either - complete, or partial. suppressing the expression of an idea is still censorship. in the case you mentioned, teaching science requires substantial evidence (see: several centuries of epistemology).
also 'i hate it except when it benefits me' is human nature, it's why we have laws that are (hopefully) impartial to all that crap. we're all flawed, man.
I teach at the university level, and I had a student last semester who wrote on my evaluation form, "As a WHITE MALE, you need to give more attention to women and minorities in the classroom". None of my other students felt this way, but I take any criticism I receive seriously, and put thought into this response. Anyways, the reason I bring this up is because I feel very singled out, because being a white male is not something i can control. I was born as a white male, and I don't think it's anybody's right to say that my actions should be dependent on factors outside my control, and i shouldn't have to censor myself just because of my race or sex.
anyways my point is that if you want to live in a free society, you have to respect that EVERYONE has rights, and some of those will infringe on yours. people have the right to speak, you might get offended (per my example above). people have the right to vote, your candidate might not win. people have the right to bear arms, folks are going to get shot.
living in a free society demands that we all approach these things RATIONALLY, and realize that individuals have to be mature in order to live in such a society (especially when in close proximity). Unfortunately this isn't the status quo, and people are grossly misinformed regarding concepts of justice, equality, and entitlement. Or maybe they choose not to think of them (cognitive dissonance). Regardless people need to grow the heck up.
My student said something hurtful to me, but i'm not going to sue them or anything because i'm a grown man, who understands that "that's just like, your opinion, man".
(in case it wasn't obvious, i abhor censorship EXCEPT in the case where speech is demonstrably FALSE or UNGROUNDED, i.e. teaching creationism, or impersonating a soldier to get benefits, lying in court testimony, or false advertising).
oh brave new world
that said, i think we as a society need to get past the notion that human life is somehow 'sacred'. we're not really that special, especially on an individual level. there are over 7 billion of us. get over yourselves.
Slorgath, the Gambling Goblin 2RR
Legendary Creature - Goblin Rogue
Slorgath has haste as long as an opponent controls 2 or more creatures.
t:roll a six sided die. Slorgath deals that much damage to target creature.
3/3
next: a commander that makes your opponents afraid to play mana rocks like sol ring or mana crypt or thran dynamo in their decks.
the logic just doesn't add up. This smells to me more like an excuse to hate obamacare than a real issue that the employers have with their morality.