5 ms·

You're wondering about the ethics of beating someone up to get what you want?

by davesque 10y ago

tim333 10y ago
It might make the world a better place overall but likely cause problems for the beater.
- CamperBob2 10y ago
  One of those post-bucket list things to do, maybe, after you've been diagnosed with a terminal illness that still leaves you a month or two of personal autonomy.
  - jrockway 10y ago
    Don't worry, life is a terminal illness.
  - curiousgal 10y ago
    The potential silver lining of my breast cancer! I volunteer!
    - CamperBob2 10y ago
      This is where I follow up my earlier post to make it crystal clear that it was tongue-in-cheek, not meant to be taken as advice, encouragement or incitement to violence, and that I would personally consider it very, very wrong for someone to confront patent trolls by flattening them with uparmored construction equipment Killdozer-style, taking them out with a deer rifle Texas-style, or pulling up alongside their cars on the highway and attaching limpet mines, Mossad-style. Under no circumstances should anyone do any of those things, because that would be wrong. (And, more seriously, I hope you never have a good excuse to try.)
CamperBob2 10y ago
My view is admittedly a bit on the extreme side (to put it mildly) but I'd see it as similar to hunting Somali pirates or Congolese poachers for sport. There are things a human can do to set themselves apart from the rest of humanity, and patent trolling is one of them. Patent trolls don't rise (sink) to the level of child molesters, serial killers or ISIS terrorists, but still... I wouldn't shed any tears if something really bad happened to these people, whether by accident or design. They attack the best of us while contributing nothing. We don't need them.
- allendoerfer 10y ago
  I think it is important to acknowledge why people do things they do. - Somali pirates and Congolese poachers: poor and miserable conditions with no perspective to get out of it - patent trolls: greedy, moral-less legal positivists - serial killers: psychopaths - ISIS terrorists: brainwashed losers, who want easy answers, a mission, a group and a leader - child molesters: I would say mentally ill If you see it like this, you can fix the problems below. You will still have to protect society from serial killers, but all others seem to be solvable. - African criminals: fix Africa - legal positivists: fix the law - ISIS terrorists: fix ghettos - child molesters: fix paedophilia Of course this will only fix the problem for future generations. Potential patent trolls will be assholes in a post-troll world, too, but you will always have to deal with those. There are paedophiles who are not human scum, but are aware what consequences their actions could have. That is also why the catholic church with its celibacy is so attractive to some of them. I personally think that institutions must act perfectly morally, but personally affected individuals should be required ultima ratio to act against morals and be later judged and punished for it. So in this case, when you are a small developer and there is no way out …
  - Grishnakh 10y ago
    I don't know how you can "fix" paedophilia, any more than you can "fix" psychopathy. AFAICT, they're both mental disorders that are very deep-seated and probably unfixable, at least until we have better biomedical technology and a better understanding of the human brain. There's probably ways we might be able to identify these people as high-risk and put them in programs to monitor them and help them avoid committing crimes, but that's more of a work-around than a fix. Patent trolls aren't much different from serial killers, though: they're both socio/psychopaths (same thing really). Patent trolls aren't violent, and are greedy for money, that's the main difference. But the law itself you could say is a work-around for problems like this, but as we see here the law is broken and needs to be fixed because the sociopaths have figured out a way to abuse the law for their gain.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Grishnakh 10y ago
I hate to point it out, but history is littered with examples of cases where following the law and using non-violent diplomatic approaches failed, necessitating the use of violence (in the eyes of those who felt they had no recourse). It's the very reason just about every nation has a military, for instance. In a nutshell, if you think beating someone up to get what you want is wrong, then you must necessarily think that military force is wrong, and maintaining a military force is also wrong. You can also look at some pretty extreme examples: if you're a Jew in 1930-something Germany or one of the nations it occupied, and a bunch of soldiers are coming to take you to the camps, is it unethical for you to use violence against them? Of course, you might argue that's a bad example because the other side already initiated the use of (or threat of; they're carrying guns) violence so you had the right of self-defense. But that's no different than having a legal system that you feel is unjust: if you don't agree with the legal system's ruling and resist or ignore it, then they'll send men with guns to force you into submission using violence. Now you can argue that there's a huge difference in magnitude between being taken to death camps and losing a patent case and having to give a large sum of money to a patent troll, but I think the principle is the same, it's just a difference in degree. All human conflict is like this: we have systems we try to use to avoid solving our differences with violence, but at times, these systems fail and at least one party feels the price/risk is worth it. Luckily, if you look at the entirety of human history, the amount of violence has been steadily falling, and we're probably at the least violent point in history, if you look at humanity as a whole.

You're wondering about the ethics of beating someone up to get what you want?

tim333 10y ago

It might make the world a better place overall but likely cause problems for the beater.

CamperBob2 10y ago
One of those post-bucket list things to do, maybe, after you've been diagnosed with a terminal illness that still leaves you a month or two of personal autonomy.
- jrockway 10y ago
  Don't worry, life is a terminal illness.
- curiousgal 10y ago
  The potential silver lining of my breast cancer! I volunteer!
  - CamperBob2 10y ago
    This is where I follow up my earlier post to make it crystal clear that it was tongue-in-cheek, not meant to be taken as advice, encouragement or incitement to violence, and that I would personally consider it very, very wrong for someone to confront patent trolls by flattening them with uparmored construction equipment Killdozer-style, taking them out with a deer rifle Texas-style, or pulling up alongside their cars on the highway and attaching limpet mines, Mossad-style. Under no circumstances should anyone do any of those things, because that would be wrong. (And, more seriously, I hope you never have a good excuse to try.)

CamperBob2 10y ago

My view is admittedly a bit on the extreme side (to put it mildly) but I'd see it as similar to hunting Somali pirates or Congolese poachers for sport. There are things a human can do to set themselves apart from the rest of humanity, and patent trolling is one of them. Patent trolls don't rise (sink) to the level of child molesters, serial killers or ISIS terrorists, but still... I wouldn't shed any tears if something really bad happened to these people, whether by accident or design. They attack the best of us while contributing nothing. We don't need them.

allendoerfer 10y ago
I think it is important to acknowledge why people do things they do. - Somali pirates and Congolese poachers: poor and miserable conditions with no perspective to get out of it - patent trolls: greedy, moral-less legal positivists - serial killers: psychopaths - ISIS terrorists: brainwashed losers, who want easy answers, a mission, a group and a leader - child molesters: I would say mentally ill If you see it like this, you can fix the problems below. You will still have to protect society from serial killers, but all others seem to be solvable. - African criminals: fix Africa - legal positivists: fix the law - ISIS terrorists: fix ghettos - child molesters: fix paedophilia Of course this will only fix the problem for future generations. Potential patent trolls will be assholes in a post-troll world, too, but you will always have to deal with those. There are paedophiles who are not human scum, but are aware what consequences their actions could have. That is also why the catholic church with its celibacy is so attractive to some of them. I personally think that institutions must act perfectly morally, but personally affected individuals should be required ultima ratio to act against morals and be later judged and punished for it. So in this case, when you are a small developer and there is no way out …
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  I don't know how you can "fix" paedophilia, any more than you can "fix" psychopathy. AFAICT, they're both mental disorders that are very deep-seated and probably unfixable, at least until we have better biomedical technology and a better understanding of the human brain. There's probably ways we might be able to identify these people as high-risk and put them in programs to monitor them and help them avoid committing crimes, but that's more of a work-around than a fix. Patent trolls aren't much different from serial killers, though: they're both socio/psychopaths (same thing really). Patent trolls aren't violent, and are greedy for money, that's the main difference. But the law itself you could say is a work-around for problems like this, but as we see here the law is broken and needs to be fixed because the sociopaths have figured out a way to abuse the law for their gain.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

Grishnakh 10y ago

I hate to point it out, but history is littered with examples of cases where following the law and using non-violent diplomatic approaches failed, necessitating the use of violence (in the eyes of those who felt they had no recourse). It's the very reason just about every nation has a military, for instance. In a nutshell, if you think beating someone up to get what you want is wrong, then you must necessarily think that military force is wrong, and maintaining a military force is also wrong. You can also look at some pretty extreme examples: if you're a Jew in 1930-something Germany or one of the nations it occupied, and a bunch of soldiers are coming to take you to the camps, is it unethical for you to use violence against them? Of course, you might argue that's a bad example because the other side already initiated the use of (or threat of; they're carrying guns) violence so you had the right of self-defense. But that's no different than having a legal system that you feel is unjust: if you don't agree with the legal system's ruling and resist or ignore it, then they'll send men with guns to force you into submission using violence. Now you can argue that there's a huge difference in magnitude between being taken to death camps and losing a patent case and having to give a large sum of money to a patent troll, but I think the principle is the same, it's just a difference in degree. All human conflict is like this: we have systems we try to use to avoid solving our differences with violence, but at times, these systems fail and at least one party feels the price/risk is worth it. Luckily, if you look at the entirety of human history, the amount of violence has been steadily falling, and we're probably at the least violent point in history, if you look at humanity as a whole.