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> you should feel bad for committing crimes, even if it's clear that if you didn't somebody else would i don't think edward snowden should feel bad for what h

> you should feel bad for committing crimes, even if it's clear that if you didn't somebody else would i don't think edward snowden should feel bad for what he did, even if it's considered a crime. as for robbing a drunk guy in the gutter, you could argue that you are teaching him a lesson, and that the price of this lesson is the cash he has in his wallet now. it would be a rather aggresive marketing strategy, but hopefully the guy does learn from it. likewise, you could argue that soros breaking the bank of England is him teaching the people of the world a lesson - you can't prop up a currency indefinitely. people like him - folks with lots of money and more desire to earn money than to support practices they think are unsustainable - will prevent governments from pegging rates indefinitely, just as muggers will prevent people from wandering carelessly through parts of town where no one is watching them. i'd like to live in a world where people were more interested in gaining a positive reputation by passing on the chance to profit from destruction, even if it's legal. that wish is exactly like wanting to live in a world where nobody gets mugged: both of those situations are inevitable if omnipresent surveillance takes off. if being caught is a certainty, nobody's going to pick a wallet anywhere. if databases of people's responses to your actions are publicly available, many supporters of government-backed monetary policy - as well as the friends and families of those who suffered from his actions - will shun soros and anyone else who helps knock a tower over because 'it was going to fall anyhow.'

CocaKoala 12y ago
I have no idea what you're saying. You're bringing up Edward Snowden, who has literally nothing to do with the conversation at hand. Then you're proposing some form of defense for the idea of mugging the drunk guy. Then you're shifting right to omnipresent surveillance, which again has nothing to do with what we're talking about. Your comment is utterly incomprehensible to me; I know what all the individual words mean, but I can't put them together into a cohesive thought that's relevant. Can you rephrase yourself in a way that's more understandable?
- PhasmaFelis 12y ago
  > You're bringing up Edward Snowden, who has literally nothing to do with the conversation at hand. That was pretty clearly a response to the line he quoted directly above, i.e. rebutting the notion that an action's morality is solely determined by whether or not that action is classified as a crime.
  - CocaKoala 12y ago
    Ah; I must have missed the part where somebody stated that an action's morality is solely determined by whether or not that action is classified as a crime. I agree that that's a silly metric to use as the sole determination of the morality of an action, but can you do me a favour and point to where that was stated? I'm having trouble finding it.
    - PhasmaFelis 12y ago
      A ways upthread, you said: > Well, no. Robbing a passed out drunk is a crime; you should feel bad for committing crimes, even if it's clear that if you didn't somebody else would. Shorting a stock (or a currency) is not a crime; it's an acceptable thing to do in a market. If you didn't intend to imply that robbing the drunk is bad because it's a crime, and what Soros did is acceptable because it's not a crime, then you weren't communicating very clearly.
adhoc_0xf0f0 12y ago
some ideas i got while reading your interesting post, sketched them out and think are interesting and useful for someone to consider but not important enough for me to bother arranging into cohesive structure (and so potentially asis contain some nonsense, lol): consider/distinguish/define innocence vs unawareness vs incompetence innocent of what ? is it ok to eat cows ? distinguish from unconscious / unaware / stupid / mentally challenged humans at a biological level - self reflection in another person ? empathy ? isn't that really selfish.. (is selfishness wrong anyways) yes law | crime != justice | morality however internal sense of justice, morality - some forms of it (internalised socialism/communism) are a heavy burden and disadvantage, objectively wrong because thoroughly exploited by weak / lazy / unlucky people and groups, and various degrees of sociopaths and most of all exploited by the great unaware masses - innocents ? - muppets ? otoh social cooperation beneficial to all (if that is _the_ goal) only if driven by free will in a way that benefits each member according to his own estimate of his own needs & desires and willing sacrifices to trade .. (benefits vs costs) is morality guided by relative quantity of beneficiaries/victims & 'quality' of some definitions and scopes of benefit vs harms relative harm or good, does an objective 'detached' harm / goodness exist without context. (harm / goodness are not nouns, not objects, just results from actions) no 'cold' objective guidelines ..offtopic philosophising self sacrifice without self benefit = self destruction for someone else's benefit, or no benefit at all - just stupid re reputation - an external motive, essentially hunger for reward + fear of punishment, at a social level :. potentially a form of hypocrisy, not 'real' internal morality re omnipresent monitoring - fucking creepy kafkaesque horror show... lol, i think population will creep out waay before it ever happens, privacy awareness is already entering mainstream (snowden, visible hackings, internet driven mainstreamising of countercultures) ..re soros et al: foregoing opportunities to appease the incompetent (or unaware, stupid) is a form of self sacrifice - for people who don't deserve it / appreciate it / fucked over by their own government and muppetry / there's really no reward / stupid and futile

CocaKoala 12y ago

I have no idea what you're saying. You're bringing up Edward Snowden, who has literally nothing to do with the conversation at hand. Then you're proposing some form of defense for the idea of mugging the drunk guy. Then you're shifting right to omnipresent surveillance, which again has nothing to do with what we're talking about. Your comment is utterly incomprehensible to me; I know what all the individual words mean, but I can't put them together into a cohesive thought that's relevant. Can you rephrase yourself in a way that's more understandable?

PhasmaFelis 12y ago
> You're bringing up Edward Snowden, who has literally nothing to do with the conversation at hand. That was pretty clearly a response to the line he quoted directly above, i.e. rebutting the notion that an action's morality is solely determined by whether or not that action is classified as a crime.
- CocaKoala 12y ago
  Ah; I must have missed the part where somebody stated that an action's morality is solely determined by whether or not that action is classified as a crime. I agree that that's a silly metric to use as the sole determination of the morality of an action, but can you do me a favour and point to where that was stated? I'm having trouble finding it.
  - PhasmaFelis 12y ago
    A ways upthread, you said: > Well, no. Robbing a passed out drunk is a crime; you should feel bad for committing crimes, even if it's clear that if you didn't somebody else would. Shorting a stock (or a currency) is not a crime; it's an acceptable thing to do in a market. If you didn't intend to imply that robbing the drunk is bad because it's a crime, and what Soros did is acceptable because it's not a crime, then you weren't communicating very clearly.

adhoc_0xf0f0 12y ago

some ideas i got while reading your interesting post, sketched them out and think are interesting and useful for someone to consider but not important enough for me to bother arranging into cohesive structure (and so potentially asis contain some nonsense, lol): consider/distinguish/define innocence vs unawareness vs incompetence innocent of what ? is it ok to eat cows ? distinguish from unconscious / unaware / stupid / mentally challenged humans at a biological level - self reflection in another person ? empathy ? isn't that really selfish.. (is selfishness wrong anyways) yes law | crime != justice | morality however internal sense of justice, morality - some forms of it (internalised socialism/communism) are a heavy burden and disadvantage, objectively wrong because thoroughly exploited by weak / lazy / unlucky people and groups, and various degrees of sociopaths and most of all exploited by the great unaware masses - innocents ? - muppets ? otoh social cooperation beneficial to all (if that is _the_ goal) only if driven by free will in a way that benefits each member according to his own estimate of his own needs & desires and willing sacrifices to trade .. (benefits vs costs) is morality guided by relative quantity of beneficiaries/victims & 'quality' of some definitions and scopes of benefit vs harms relative harm or good, does an objective 'detached' harm / goodness exist without context. (harm / goodness are not nouns, not objects, just results from actions) no 'cold' objective guidelines ..offtopic philosophising self sacrifice without self benefit = self destruction for someone else's benefit, or no benefit at all - just stupid re reputation - an external motive, essentially hunger for reward + fear of punishment, at a social level :. potentially a form of hypocrisy, not 'real' internal morality re omnipresent monitoring - fucking creepy kafkaesque horror show... lol, i think population will creep out waay before it ever happens, privacy awareness is already entering mainstream (snowden, visible hackings, internet driven mainstreamising of countercultures) ..re soros et al: foregoing opportunities to appease the incompetent (or unaware, stupid) is a form of self sacrifice - for people who don't deserve it / appreciate it / fucked over by their own government and muppetry / there's really no reward / stupid and futile