The thread title has an unfortunate implication that the way one deals with the police should change depending on one's innocence. Well, I suppose that could be fortunate, assuming guilty parties are interested in turning themselves in, but if you're hoping to get away with something, you must always respond the same way. If you're nice and friendly and show them anything and everything when you're innocent, but refuse when you're guilty, that's a tell. Much better to always be one way or the other - and since one of those is significantly more risky when you're guilty...
What I run into is: how can copyright law best serve the public interest?
For example, is it really in the public's best interest that nobody can generate Mickey Mouse cartoons except the Disney company for over a hundred years? Or does it at some point before then grow into the sort of thing we should be able to recreate and repurpose? Why would it fall to either side?
The most common problem I hear about is branding. That is, when any abrasive group can use a character as a mascot, or it can become widely distributed in objectionable works, it can come to the point that it's associated more strongly with that than the original material. But why isn't it enough to have "Disney presents Mickey Mouse" be the brand instead of just "Mickey Mouse"? Why can't we just have market competition on this sort of thing determine what the public is interested in seeing?
Or, we already have ratings boards and legal tests for judging subjective notions of propriety, so couldn't we establish a sense of appropriate and inappropriate derivative works? So we could have a shorter term prohibiting things like "I want to have Bugs Bunny appear in my comic" and a longer term for things like "I want to feature Care Bears in my erotic short stories" - and then base this on what the owners produced with the property.
In any case, ten years seems a very reasonable limit on copyright protections to me. I really don't see how extending it beyond that is in the public interest as opposed to the artist's financial interests.
Quote from "mondu_the_fat" »
I say leave it up to the owner of the franchise. If he wants to allow (or ignores) derivative work, fine. If not, then don't force the issue. The current situation is fine by me.
The problem is that unless the owner declares which way they feel, we can't know what's allowable or not. Many artists don't think about licensing and don't make their wishes clear to us, and later comment that they don't really care about fanart or filesharing or whatever it is. I'd prefer a system where people are much more explicit about what they approve and disapprove of so everyone can benefit.
My brother taught me when I was five with either Beta or Unlimited (yeah, War Mammoth!). I dropped out when he did at Chronicles, and got back into it late in Urza's Block - just late enough to miss all the rules changes, as it happens, and I didn't actually get updated until Onslaught block.
Since Time Spiral block's passing, I've effectively quit buying new cards outside the occasional playset, and a brief stint of draft play for Scars of Mirrodin. I really dislike where the game's been going since, with colour being a readily ignored minor hurdle and creature design growing simultaneously more powerful and less interesting.
Just made some jammie dodgers for the first time, using a spiced peach-pomegranate jam I ran across yesterday. I like how they turned out; will have to make more some time, if I can avoid eating the shortbread before I get the sandwiching done.
I jumped in the Rock Band with the Beatles, and then my friends got me Rock Band 2 so they could enjoy the music as well. Grabbed Rock Band 3, but I haven't been playing much of it at all lately, partly because there's not much of the old stuff for me to add in, and partly because my rock interest was never that strong and is waning these days.
Before that some friends of mine used to do a lot of In The Groove and Stepmania, making charts and such, so I did some of that back then.
And I have to say, I'd love to see a knitted Phelddagrif.
Outsider or insider? Because we're outsiders to this scenario and thus we understand it. It would be those inside the hypothetical deterministic universe that would have a problem with knowing which governs them.
Not convinced you can.
Huh? I'm saying that if I'm some alien (to use the pre-space meaning), how would you demonstrate to me that you exhibit free will? What is the measurable difference between free will and determinism as you described them earlier? By what means can you prove to yourself that you have free will and are not an automaton (as I believe we all are)?
If you're not convinced you can, why do you hold to a free-will universe?
In a free will setting, Highroller could take either the strawberry or the chocolate cone. Both outcomes are possible. It is then up to Highroller to choose which of the ice cream cones he wishes to take. He chooses the chocolate. In this case, there are two potential outcomes (well, several, actually. Highroller would walk out of the store without any ice cream, Highroller could choose to demand his ice cream be served in a cup, Highroller could teach the ice cream scooper how to dougie), with one actualized outcome.
In determinism, Highroller does not have a selection of ice cream cones. There is one outcome: Highroller takes the chocolate. The labels of "potential" and "actualized" outcomes are meaningless because Highroller will take the chocolate ice cream cone. That is the course that the chain of events will follow. There is no choice because there is no selection of options, there is only one, and because Highroller has no free will, and thus has no power to decide anything. All things are completely out of Highroller's control. He is like a model train moving along a preguided course.
There's one thing I don't get about this, Highroller. How are these measurably different? How is an outsider to know that you exhibit the former and not the latter? And if it can't be demonstrated to others, how do you know you have the former rather than the illusion of it?
Because moral relativism invalidates ethics. You're only proving my point that this scenario renders ethics meaningless.
I don't believe my arguments to this point must lead to moral relativism, but I am a subscriber, yes. And no, it does not invalidate ethics, but is a branch of thinking within ethics; Wikipedia can tell you as much.
And sorry, I should have said selection-making rather than decision-making. Or program execution. Or whatever. But I'll note that there were clarifying references. To restate, consciousness is not required to have a process select certain outputs over others, as we see in everything from sorting algorithms to instinctual responses from living things.
I might say that the only difference between what you think of as a "choice" and an instinctive reaction to me as a determinist is the path it takes. Instinctual programming is efficient to the point of making an immediate selection, where conscious programming is inefficient but significantly more flexible.
I considered making a recording of these parodies (in baritone or bass range) when I instead decided to go for one we sang in last weekend's show: "Somewhere Overweight People", slight variation from Allan Sherman's rewording. Unfortunately, I've very little in the way of recording equipment, so I can't do any of it.
(to the tune of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow")
Somewhere overweight people
Just like me
Need a place where they never
Count every calorie.
Somewhere overweight people
Have a ball
In a place where they've never
Heard of cholesterol.
Where people eat just what they want
And still look slim and trim and gaunt
You'll find me.
Where every little thing I taste
Won't end up showing on my waist,
Or worse - behind me.
Somewhere over-indulging
Is divine
And their waist-lines aren't bulging
Why, then, oh why
Is mine?
If bluebirds weighed as much as I
There'd be some big fat bluebirds
In the sky.
Kiss your waist goodbye!
Follow its programming.
Of course a program doing executions or whatever isn't choice.
Thanks, and I never said it was, just that it's the process by which we deterministic things determine what to do (at least, I certainly hope you won't deny that a sorting algorithm determines thingss in its processes). Wonderful!, we now have a common language.
We cannot choose, remember? So, taking that into account, what meaning does the statement, "You should not choose this action, you should choose this action," mean? Again, we cannot make choices. If we cannot make choices, we cannot make wrong or right choices.
We instead have right or wrong programming, or right or wrong execution of it, or right or wrong conditions for the programming to run in. Ethics then becomes managing that programming (in ways we don't actually choose between, but seem to in the process of following our programming), shaping it to follow the (programmed) desires of society.
... You don't think a computer program is out of control? [...]
That's not a choice. It's an instinctive reaction. There's no thought involved, you reflexively remove your hand.
And I call that perfect control - just not conscious control. Consciousness isn't required for decision-making of the programming kind, as noted in animals we're fairly certain don't have it.
Remember that time you accidentally touched something hot or sharp? Did you think to yourself, "Hrm..., I'm going to weigh the choices between whether or not I should remove my hand from this hot stove."
Amusingly, this happened recently with a light fixture and I did think through it that way. It happens fairly often, really, and being a baker has forced me to consider things like that. The things you do to avoid destroying product...
That's neither choice nor action, any more than the candlestick.
I didn't say it was, I just wanted to know what you called it so I can use that term instead. I think your definition of action is flawed - think of the traditional phrasing for Newton's second law - but it's really not important if I can get your term for what a program does in execution.
No, seriously, what does that mean? What does that mean in a world without choice? If a person is not in control of his or herself, what does it mean to say that person behaves in a manner that is morally correct or incorrect?
Morally correct or incorrect would be something that is decided upon by society, based on its goals. Moral actions are those which work towards those ends we desire. (Those goals would be selected in a deterministic process, of course.)
It's saying, "We should do __," right? What meaning does that sentence have in a universe where no one is in control of their actions? Do you see the problem?
Any issue I have with this question presents in a free will scenario, but I don't believe a dog or mussel or polyp or tree or computer program is out of control.
Sorry I've not been around, there was a bit of run-up to the chorus shows yesterday - which were my first performances. Super fun! I had no idea how I'd handle being in front of an audience, but it went swimmingly, aside from an abundance of energy making my face twitch. Sure, we stumbled, and at one point sang multiple verses of the song at the same time, but we recovered and the thoroughly delighted audience seems to not have noticed, somehow.
Also, got laid off on Wednesday. :/
Yay knitting!
I prefer Eat It to Still Alive, and I can all but guarantee pi-ratical's support for the former as well.
If it's determinism, he must make the same choice each time, because it's determined.
Sorry to add another member to this discussion, but that's conflating a certain form of fatalism with the more general determinism. If he has different memories from another time, he could (deterministically) act in another fashion. Grant is spot on in bringing up finite state machines.
You're really getting hung up on "choice" and "act". What would you call the process by which a program with a long chain of if-then conditions determines what to do? This is effectively what determinists think goes on inside a person's mind when they do the same - or at least, that's how I think of it. And I'm pretty sure most people feel it's what the vast majority of other animals do: here's what I'm feeling like, here's what's going on around me, pass it through the instinct checklist, here's what I'm going to do.
For me, ethics then becomes a matter of ensuring that that chain of if-then conditions has outputs that we find "good". It's the same thing as training your dog to do what you want it to do. It pooped in the house, we don't like it, we train it to do otherwise. It doesn't matter that it couldn't have done it any other way at the time; all we want is for it to stop happening in the future. So it goes for a person killing another: let's change the conditions under which it occurred to keep it from happening again.
George C Scott makes for a great Patton, and he was great in a little known supernatural thriller called The Changeling, but I'll take Michael Caine over him almost any other time.
I hope you're just forgetting about him in Dr Strangelove, because no way Caine does that one nearly so well. Of course, it's not like Scott meant to do that...
I didn't mention Albert Finney. He played a pretty good Scrooge as well.
Whoa, how did I never hear of this? I need to see it, Finney's an awesome actor; my sister and I were actively disappointed he wasn't cast as Horace Slughorn for Harry Potter 6 despite there being zero reason to think he was doing it. He'd have been so perfect!
@Christmas time stuff: I just really want to focus on this sort of thing. I LOVE Christmas...it's just so fun and enjoyable. I went to a Hand-bell Christmas Concert tonight at one of the local churches. It's exactly what you think it is: Christmas music played by ringing bells and chimes that are pitched to a single note. It's pretty cool. It's a 5 octave range played by around 15 people. They're pretty beautiful arrangements.
Fun! That's a family tradition on my mother's side, where I've got some 26 cousins. Most of us got together at Thanksgiving and on Christmas Eve until five or ten years ago, and the chimes were a favourite activity. I think ours was three octaves, doubling up on notes as necessary. We younger kids weren't so good at the timing back then, though.
My chorus's Christmas concert is this weekend. It's come on so fast!
Decipher's was running in the 90s, WotC got the license instead starting in 2001 or 2002. I'm a fan of the Decipher game, which was more about board position and control, and didn't care much for the WotC one, which was more heavily combat-oriented. I believe they're generally referred to by CCG (being Decipher) and TCG (being WotC).
MTI is great for having Tim Curry, I can't deny that. He's similarly the single greatest thing about Ferngully. Why doesn't he get more musical numbers in his movies?
And I enjoy the Muppet Christmas Carol, but it's annoying that the DVD skips the "Love is Gone" scene in the 16x9 edit, forcing me to choose between missing the song, stopping the movie to switch to the 4x3 and back for it, or watching the whole thing without the far sides of the film. But I'm not sure I can agree, Kank, that Michael Caine is a better Scrooge than George C Scott - though I would agree that the Muppet's movie is overall better than Scott's.
I'm really hesitant on The Muppets. I go for The Muppet Movie and The Great Muppet Caper over the others in a way that's like preferring the classic Disney animated films to even the best of the newer ones (except maybe Beauty and the Beast). There's a feeling there, a feeling I tell myself is more than just nostalgia, that makes them... warm. And I understand there's bathroom humour? They just didn't go there back then.
On sequels, yeah, it's very hard to get right. I'm surprised The Godfather: Part II hasn't been mentioned as a good one, and Pixar did very will with Toy Story 2 so I wasn't willing to write off Cars 2 at the first mention, but nothing I've heard about it since makes me want to see it.
I should look up the Brave trailer.
For example, is it really in the public's best interest that nobody can generate Mickey Mouse cartoons except the Disney company for over a hundred years? Or does it at some point before then grow into the sort of thing we should be able to recreate and repurpose? Why would it fall to either side?
The most common problem I hear about is branding. That is, when any abrasive group can use a character as a mascot, or it can become widely distributed in objectionable works, it can come to the point that it's associated more strongly with that than the original material. But why isn't it enough to have "Disney presents Mickey Mouse" be the brand instead of just "Mickey Mouse"? Why can't we just have market competition on this sort of thing determine what the public is interested in seeing?
Or, we already have ratings boards and legal tests for judging subjective notions of propriety, so couldn't we establish a sense of appropriate and inappropriate derivative works? So we could have a shorter term prohibiting things like "I want to have Bugs Bunny appear in my comic" and a longer term for things like "I want to feature Care Bears in my erotic short stories" - and then base this on what the owners produced with the property.
In any case, ten years seems a very reasonable limit on copyright protections to me. I really don't see how extending it beyond that is in the public interest as opposed to the artist's financial interests.
The problem is that unless the owner declares which way they feel, we can't know what's allowable or not. Many artists don't think about licensing and don't make their wishes clear to us, and later comment that they don't really care about fanart or filesharing or whatever it is. I'd prefer a system where people are much more explicit about what they approve and disapprove of so everyone can benefit.
Since Time Spiral block's passing, I've effectively quit buying new cards outside the occasional playset, and a brief stint of draft play for Scars of Mirrodin. I really dislike where the game's been going since, with colour being a readily ignored minor hurdle and creature design growing simultaneously more powerful and less interesting.
Just made some jammie dodgers for the first time, using a spiced peach-pomegranate jam I ran across yesterday. I like how they turned out; will have to make more some time, if I can avoid eating the shortbread before I get the sandwiching done.
I jumped in the Rock Band with the Beatles, and then my friends got me Rock Band 2 so they could enjoy the music as well. Grabbed Rock Band 3, but I haven't been playing much of it at all lately, partly because there's not much of the old stuff for me to add in, and partly because my rock interest was never that strong and is waning these days.
Before that some friends of mine used to do a lot of In The Groove and Stepmania, making charts and such, so I did some of that back then.
And I have to say, I'd love to see a knitted Phelddagrif.
If you're not convinced you can, why do you hold to a free-will universe?
Also, I think you're conflating fatalism with determinism.
And sorry, I should have said selection-making rather than decision-making. Or program execution. Or whatever. But I'll note that there were clarifying references. To restate, consciousness is not required to have a process select certain outputs over others, as we see in everything from sorting algorithms to instinctual responses from living things.
I might say that the only difference between what you think of as a "choice" and an instinctive reaction to me as a determinist is the path it takes. Instinctual programming is efficient to the point of making an immediate selection, where conscious programming is inefficient but significantly more flexible.
Somewhere overweight people
Just like me
Need a place where they never
Count every calorie.
Somewhere overweight people
Have a ball
In a place where they've never
Heard of cholesterol.
Where people eat just what they want
And still look slim and trim and gaunt
You'll find me.
Where every little thing I taste
Won't end up showing on my waist,
Or worse - behind me.
Somewhere over-indulging
Is divine
And their waist-lines aren't bulging
Why, then, oh why
Is mine?
If bluebirds weighed as much as I
There'd be some big fat bluebirds
In the sky.
Kiss your waist goodbye!
We instead have right or wrong programming, or right or wrong execution of it, or right or wrong conditions for the programming to run in. Ethics then becomes managing that programming (in ways we don't actually choose between, but seem to in the process of following our programming), shaping it to follow the (programmed) desires of society.
And I call that perfect control - just not conscious control. Consciousness isn't required for decision-making of the programming kind, as noted in animals we're fairly certain don't have it.
Amusingly, this happened recently with a light fixture and I did think through it that way. It happens fairly often, really, and being a baker has forced me to consider things like that. The things you do to avoid destroying product...
Morally correct or incorrect would be something that is decided upon by society, based on its goals. Moral actions are those which work towards those ends we desire. (Those goals would be selected in a deterministic process, of course.)
Any issue I have with this question presents in a free will scenario, but I don't believe a dog or mussel or polyp or tree or computer program is out of control.
Also, got laid off on Wednesday. :/
Yay knitting!
I prefer Eat It to Still Alive, and I can all but guarantee pi-ratical's support for the former as well.
You're really getting hung up on "choice" and "act". What would you call the process by which a program with a long chain of if-then conditions determines what to do? This is effectively what determinists think goes on inside a person's mind when they do the same - or at least, that's how I think of it. And I'm pretty sure most people feel it's what the vast majority of other animals do: here's what I'm feeling like, here's what's going on around me, pass it through the instinct checklist, here's what I'm going to do.
For me, ethics then becomes a matter of ensuring that that chain of if-then conditions has outputs that we find "good". It's the same thing as training your dog to do what you want it to do. It pooped in the house, we don't like it, we train it to do otherwise. It doesn't matter that it couldn't have done it any other way at the time; all we want is for it to stop happening in the future. So it goes for a person killing another: let's change the conditions under which it occurred to keep it from happening again.
Whoa, how did I never hear of this? I need to see it, Finney's an awesome actor; my sister and I were actively disappointed he wasn't cast as Horace Slughorn for Harry Potter 6 despite there being zero reason to think he was doing it. He'd have been so perfect!
Fun! That's a family tradition on my mother's side, where I've got some 26 cousins. Most of us got together at Thanksgiving and on Christmas Eve until five or ten years ago, and the chimes were a favourite activity. I think ours was three octaves, doubling up on notes as necessary. We younger kids weren't so good at the timing back then, though.
My chorus's Christmas concert is this weekend. It's come on so fast!
MTI is great for having Tim Curry, I can't deny that. He's similarly the single greatest thing about Ferngully. Why doesn't he get more musical numbers in his movies?
And I enjoy the Muppet Christmas Carol, but it's annoying that the DVD skips the "Love is Gone" scene in the 16x9 edit, forcing me to choose between missing the song, stopping the movie to switch to the 4x3 and back for it, or watching the whole thing without the far sides of the film.
On sequels, yeah, it's very hard to get right. I'm surprised The Godfather: Part II hasn't been mentioned as a good one, and Pixar did very will with Toy Story 2 so I wasn't willing to write off Cars 2 at the first mention, but nothing I've heard about it since makes me want to see it.
I should look up the Brave trailer.