LimpyLoo

no worries mate i used to think that moral philosophy was one of things that was irredeemably academic and had nothing to say about real life in the real world i now think that moral philosophy is literally the most important thing about real life in the real world especially heading into the age of fully-automated robots and radical life extension the world resembles a long-ago thought experiment more and more each day for example simply thinking about radical life extension made me realize that i'm a hardcore socialist every person alive (or who will ever live) should have access to it and thus the cost of its R & D should be socialized (perhaps worldwide) and everyone should share in the fruits (there is an actual cure for Hepatitus C now but it costs $100,000 because it was developed by a private company population ethics-wise, that isn't the world I want to live in)

- what is defined as racism is getting looser all the time it seems, don't like obama's policies, racist; having a long dead confederate general lying in a grave, racist dig him up pronto; liking a flag that your ancestors fought and died under and means something to your community or just having it on your truck cause it looks cool and feels rebellious, racist; any symbols of the south, racist tear them down; saying you have black friends or that you believe everyone is equal, racist. Looser and looser, and pointlessly divisive when we were coming together and getting along fine for the most part. All the problems in society, like the main one of increasing poverty and social inequality is being driven not by your fellow americans but by a super rich cabal that have no interest even in the concept of the united states of america. This current predilection with race is a fiction to distract the population and drive a wedge between everyone that isn't the 0.001%. Unfortunately the pointless clone people are taking up their marching orders, the plan is working, well until everyone realises that they're being manipulated and who the real evil is, what we should truly be complaining about on our facebooks and twitter accounts. hi chunky

Alright, you guys win GC won me over with his semantic dissection of the word "self-help"

so i'm trying to watch GC I swear I really am but his 'give that idiot a Darwin Award' vibe is just so gross but then he'll win me back over a bit with stuff like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilipDBclxRc

1) I agree that PC-ness has made certain legitimate discussions taboo, but I don't think this is one of those times. I know it's hard (for some people) to see Mexicans as 3-dimensional human beings like the rest of us, but c'mon now lol...I mean, these are just people like you and me who are trying to escape extreme poverty and happen to speak another language...if you were born in their neighborhood(s), you'd probably do the same...(and then some right-winger would accuse you of being a cut-throat opportunist) 2) I strongly disagree...while there is a subset of war vets who are staunchly anti-war, most of them seem to be the type to go "fuck yeah" to American Sniper

That is a practical/consequentialist concern. It has nothing to do with our moral responsibility for the actions of others. If you are saying that the two are not equivalent because we can't retaliate against NK without causing diplomatic harm, then again that has nothing to do with moral responsibility. And being able to throw a white supremacist in jail has no impact on our moral culpability regarding his actions in the first place. I recommend you read some moral philosophy from the last couple hundred years or so. Peter Singer, Derek Parfit... Plato and Kant were smart dudes but they both had some idiotic ideas. Within moral philosophy they are regarded much the way Freud is within Psychology: important but (mostly) outmoded. The best way to start finding out what you actually believe (instead of what you merely think you believe) is to consider some of the classic moral thought experiments (e.g. The Trolly Problem, Ticking Time Bomb Scenario, etc). For instance, anyone who considers the Ticking Time Bomb Scenario who DOESN'T think that torture in emergency scenarios is not only morally permissible but morally obligatory is either stupid or unreasonable imo.

Nothing funnier than a forced interracial breeding conspiracy meme lol

I've been on a "see how the other half lives" binge lately In light of the confederate flag stuff, I was looking at the National Youth Front Here's there meme page lol :http://nationalyouthfront.com/memes/

okay, i'll spell this out as plain as I can: if we can foresee that someone (e.g. a white supremacist) will harm/kill other people for bad reasons (e.g. desegregation in America), should we appease their tacit ultimatum ("segregate America or else...") to avoid people being killed? (This is literally just the NK tour-guide example, but with different variables plugged in)

Chen, how is that a false equivalency? lol walk me through why that dude is responsible for the fate of the tour guides, but we (de-segregationists) are not responsible for the fate of dead church members?

we're morally responsible for whatever it takes to wipe them out, cos that's what the endgame is in the case of NK, publishing exploitative crap is irresponsible unless the endgame is 3 centuries of "lol north korea is so fuuuuukkt uuuuuup looool i arxed some difficult questions loooooool" do people not know what an ultimatum is? people didn't seem to understand the concept of ultimatums in the 'draw muhammed' debate either... So white supremacists want segregation. Among some of them there is the tacit ultimatum: "segregate the races, or I'll go around killing people in protest." Accord to Chen's "we are morally obliged to appease tacit ultimatums," the implication is that we are morally responsible for white supremacists shooting up black churches, and therefor that we are morally obliged to segregate the races to avoid any deaths. This has nothing to do with stopping white supremacists. We're talking about tacit ultimatums.

So Chen, yes or no: are we morally responsible for the actions of white supremacists that angry about desegregation? Say yes if you want, but just please be consistent

my point is: we shouldn't fold to the ultimatums of unreasonable people and we're not responsible for what they do when we ignore their ultimatums be it the NK gov't, people who are violent as a result of blasphemous cartoons, unibombers, etc think of the implications of what you're saying, please

There is a huge moral distinction between a tacet ultimatum ("we, the NK gov't, will punish the tour guides if this is shared") and a foreseeable consequence ("if I share this, the tour guides may be punished"). In fact, this distinction--specifically, the fact that no-one saw any distinction--was the cause of my immense frustration in the "should people draw Muhammad?" debate. Let's say someone goes up to you and says "unless you do X, I will do Y"...are you morally obliged to do X? And if you don't do X, are you morally responsible for Y? If someone says "devote your life to Satan or I'll bomb a Starbucks"...are you morally obliged to devote your life to Satan? And if you don't, are you essentially murdering Starbucks patrons? What determines your moral responsibility/accountability? Now instead let's say you wanna chop down a giant tree in front of your house but you know that, in doing so, it's very likely the tree will fall onto a Starbucks. Are you morally responsible if you chop down the tree and it kills a bunch of Starbucks patrons? (hint: yes, yes you are) So like, what's the difference? Well, the huge difference is the person or persons issuing the ultimatum can choose whether to bomb a Starbucks or not. If you say "nah, I'm not gonna devote my life to Satan" then that person can either bomb a Starbucks or not. It's completely up to them. Whereas the falling tree is a perfect causal consequence of your actions. If you want to see the distinction even more clearly, imagine a world where everyone was morally obliged to capitulate to ultimatums or blackmail, and were also morally responsible for the subsequent actions of the ultimatum-given. Not only would this create massive world-changing perverse incentives, but we would be morally responsible every time some monster shot up a church for mixing the races ("we should segregate the races so that no more churches get attacked"). I'm not sure if you're supporting Sweeney or not in your argument, but my position is quite clear: In your analogy, Sweeney is cutting down the tree. Beyond that, his actions caused further distrust of foreign visitors by the North Korean regime and set back efforts of civil society engagement. i know what your position is that's why i wrote the post so, do you also think that we should segregate the races so that white supremacists don't shoot up churches? (I mean, we're just asking for white supremacists to shoot up churches by NOT segregating the races) I mean, since we're gonna be folding to ultimatums in this world of yours where should we draw the line?

There is a huge moral distinction between a tacet ultimatum ("we, the NK gov't, will punish the tour guides if this is shared") and a foreseeable consequence ("if I share this, the tour guides may be punished"). In fact, this distinction--specifically, the fact that no-one saw any distinction--was the cause of my immense frustration in the "should people draw Muhammad?" debate. Let's say someone goes up to you and says "unless you do X, I will do Y"...are you morally obliged to do X? And if you don't do X, are you morally responsible for Y? If someone says "devote your life to Satan or I'll bomb a Starbucks"...are you morally obliged to devote your life to Satan? And if you don't, are you essentially murdering Starbucks patrons? What determines your moral responsibility/accountability? Now instead let's say you wanna chop down a giant tree in front of your house but you know that, in doing so, it's very likely the tree will fall onto a Starbucks. Are you morally responsible if you chop down the tree and it kills a bunch of Starbucks patrons? (hint: yes, yes you are) So like, what's the difference? Well, the huge difference is the person or persons issuing the ultimatum can choose whether to bomb a Starbucks or not. If you say "nah, I'm not gonna devote my life to Satan" then that person can either bomb a Starbucks or not. It's completely up to them. Whereas the falling tree is a perfect causal consequence of your actions. If you want to see the distinction even more clearly, imagine a world where everyone was morally obliged to capitulate to ultimatums or blackmail, and were also morally responsible for the subsequent actions of the ultimatum-given. Not only would this create massive world-changing perverse incentives, but we would be morally responsible every time some monster shot up a church for mixing the races ("we should segregate the races so that no more churches get attacked").

no, it's more that he was speaking to a public that was a lot more repressed and conservative than today's is, so what he said then was shocking and original; but now, it sounds obvious and boring (and thus, not particularly funny). i didn't find it shocking, as i listened to it late and i think what he was saying is as relevant as ever given the fact there has been a dramatic reduction in satirical send-ups of the eilte, i also think that he's a good story teller. If people liked his stand up because they thought the ideas discussed were original at the time they must have been pretty out of the loop, speaking to power and being aware of it's obvious failings is not a new thing, it's as old as civilization. Hence my comment that his ideas still stand and opinion that we need more of it. Lord knows we don't get it from ideological ring fence dwelling insiders like john stewart. Of course some people find cynical humour a bit much and if it's not your thing (limpy) that's alright. it's not that GC is too tame or too cynical for me he's just not my thing i'm not saying he's bad i'm just saying that he's never... ...actually two days ago i was reading some of his quotes on wikiquotes or wherever and in print, I find GC occasionally funny but to me he's like a buffet of low-hanging fruit

FOR INSTANCE

I was always baffled by how well respected he was by comedians I admire. Sitting through one of his standup specials is painful. I always appreciated the unique character of his speaking voice though, and until I heard other comedians giving him high praise I thought that was what most people liked about Cosby. he's one of the 'greats' that i always scratched my head about (i also feel that way about Richard Pryor and George Carlin and a handful of other "must-like" comics) If you don't like George Carlin you might have aspergers George Carlin just talks about how stupid and fat Americans are. He is occasionally funny, but mostly he's just an asshole who thinks he's better than fat people.

I was always baffled by how well respected he was by comedians I admire. Sitting through one of his standup specials is painful. I always appreciated the unique character of his speaking voice though, and until I heard other comedians giving him high praise I thought that was what most people liked about Cosby. he's one of the 'greats' that i always scratched my head about (i also feel that way about Richard Pryor and George Carlin and a handful of other "must-like" comics)

oh man, love MT too guess we got similar music g-spots i mean, recent stuff...hmm a good place to start is to look at the folks who orbit the folks you already like so mark turner he hangs with kurt rosenwinkel, dan weiss, miles okazaki, ari hoenig (i think, right?) marcus gilmore, avashai cohen (the trumpeter), gilad hekselman, jeff ballard, david binney, baptiste trotignon (mt and bt did an awesome piano/tenor duet album...great chamber-ish tango vibe ), stefano bollani, etc mary halverson's part of the greenleaf records crew...dave douglas, miguel zenon, linda oh, donny mccaslin, jd allen, kirk knuffle, etc speaking of dave douglas, he just released an electo-acoustic album with shigeto (!!!) and mark guiliana (!!!) called "high risk"....i mean, holy fucking shit i've sort-of lost faith in jazz proper...music that can unambiguously be called jazz...imo everything that once made jazz great has migrated elsewhere...there's plenty of exceptions of course but if i hear any 4/4 shit in new jazz i tend to roll my eyes and make a wanking gesture (this coming from someone who spent most of their life studying jazz)...jazz has a nostalgia problem...the vast majority of jazz musicians study the language of the 50's and 60's (as one should) BUT then they stop their study there, and simply play bop 2.0 for the rest of their career...i want to hear schizophrenic drug addicts make jazz...i don't wanna hear some middle-aged republican in a nice suit playing straight bop over a slightly-reharmed rhythm changes....that shit can die a painful death

love MH

I love D-beams.....LOVE them

oh god, the yamaha tech guy comes across as such a politician PR guy. being asked questions and just deflecting 100% and jumping into sounds and features. i get the feeling this is less marketed at synth heads and more at small band, indie band stage stuff. the prices seem to be a bit lower now than originally revealed, which (im hoping is true!!) as it would be more in line with that idea. the thing that baffles me most is having the piano and organ models have such tiny keyboards. i cant imagine many keyboardists getting a kick out of such tiny keyboard, 3 octaves. The goofiest part of the SonicState vids was his whole "oh sorry I just so carried away when I play these things" schtick. And yeah, I think they definitely tried to please the EDM/synthpop/indie-rock kids. The ReFaces do look decent but it seems like they easily could have been deeper. (Obviously I haven't played them yet so I might be way off base...again, waiting for some creative demos to start flooding YouTube) My favorite "PR guy" is the dude from Elektron. He just explains how the thing works with zero hype, and then he jams on them. Oh, and Dave Smith and Roger Linn.

i'm anxious to see some legit synthheads make demos for these instead of just yamaha PR dudes alot of the magic of gear is in the quirks the stuff that's not in the manual i have a hunch (get it?) that the DX and CS are more powerful than they appear to be anyway, i wanna hear actual musicians get their hands dirty with these