Bulgaroctonus

Well then, why don't we just scrap the term morals altogether and say "beneficial actions" or something like that? The word 'Morals' has too many religious, altruistic, and rigid connotations. If you want to follow a utilitarian route, it is better to leave off the morality. Even if I know what you mean, others may not, especially if they don't read all the posts.

Again, scrap the 'morality' and recast the argument in clear utilitarian terms such as 'beneficial' and 'detrimental'. Even economic terms would work better. For example, if you want to proceed with the argument the moral people are a beneficial crowd to be around, say "Association with moral people is a net profit." Or "Dissociation from moral people is a net loss (no buy on this one!)."

Now you're just using my own words against me.

Alright, so that's a useful act. Why do we have to use the word 'moral' as a synonym for 'useful.' We both know that morals have often been in opposition to utility.


I did know what you were referring to, I just wanted to draw it into the open. Well, if you insist on the contradicition, couldn't I just as easily maintain that none of your statements are valid as well? Remember, if we have no free will, you're in the same boat I am. Ha.

Also, I'm going to solve the contradiction one of these days...

dalem

How do you know he hasn't talked to vets and come to a different conclusion?

Good products are the default reason for industry, and pollution, i.e. alteration of the environment, is the default cost.

-dale

Praxus

Doesn't change the fact that it is still a code for proper action (to live by), which happens to be called "Morality".


LOL, I forgot to get rid of that part:p


If a moral code does not provide you with what is "useful" in the long term it negates it's purpose as a moral code. A proper moral code must not only be "useful", it must be contiguous with the maintaining (and expanding) of our life and happiness in the long run.


Indeed, but I don't care about such skeptical non-sense.

Well, all of your conclusions are wrong untill then, according to you:-p

Anon

If i cared even one little whit what you thought about me or anything else that would be a concern to me.

However, i do not, so it is not.

I think you're a 17yo know it all jackass, very similar to the kind of know-it-all jackass i was when i was your age.

Try joining the infantry. It's good for breaking that delusion.

In a hurry...

Bulgaroctonus

And I think you are an arrogant, rude, and domineering person that shows poor reasoning skills. You are probably the most aggressive, unscholarly, and malicious personality I have encountered here at the World Affairs Board.

You are a loose cannon and a threat to rational debate.

I may come across as a know-it-all, but I'm sure some other members here will tell you that I frequently revise my opinions. I have grown more reserved and disciplined in my posting. However, you persist, like a raged animal, in attacking me with all kinds of accusations.

Other people have taken issue with my ideas, but no one else, not even Officer of Engineers, has attacked my character as much as you.

What you need to realize is that you look ridiculous by being so aggressive here.

Seeing the manners it gave you, I'm in no hurry.

Bulgaroctonus

I know how you are defining morality and I agree with your pragmatic attitude towards morality. I'm just arguing over terminology. Why should we use the word 'morality' to define useful actions, when we can cut to the chase and say 'utility.' Essentially, I'm arguing about conciseness of expression.

I know.

Right, I understand your definition of morality. I say that 'morality' is no longer necessary as a term.

Yeah, I know.

Alright, we're both well-acquainted with the contradiction. Let's just put that out of our minds when we're discussing non-philosophical affairs.

Don't misinterpret this as an abandonment of my ultimate philosophical rejection of free will. I just think for convenience, we should disregard that for now.

Defcon 6

B.S

Cut the military budget by half? What a joke. The military spending as it is, is only about 3.4% of the annual budget. You really don't know what your talking about. It's already too low.

Defcon 6

Socialism is a garbage form of gov. as well.

Anon

Heh, that's so cool.

Bulgaroctonus

Glad you like it.

Julie

ahem...I disagree with the proposal to exterminate the term "moral."

Morality, in the strictest sense of the word, deals with that which is innately regarded as right or wrong. The term is often used to refer to a system of principles and judgments by which humans subjectively determine whether given actions are right or wrong. These judgments serve to regulate the behavior of its members. Conformity to such principles may also be called morality, and the group may depend on widespread conformity to such codes for its continued existence. A "moral" may refer to a particular principle, usually as an informal and general summary with respect to a moral principle, as it is applied in a given human situation.

WAB is a group of members, and if we did away with "morals," I would not be needed as moderator, according to the above definition.

In other words, I would be out of a job here.

Confed999

It had nothing to do with manners, it was about learning what's real.

__________________
No man is free until all men are free - John Hossack
I agree completely with this Administration’s goal of a regime change in Iraq-John Kerry
even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act-John Kerry
He may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups to invite them to be a surrogate to use them against the United States. It’s the miscalculation that poses the greatest threat-John Kerry

Bulgaroctonus

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/10/sc...gewanted=print
The New York Times
January 10, 2006
A Conversation with Kerry Emanuel
With Findings on Storms, Centrist Recasts Warming Debate
By CLAUDIA DREIFUS
For decades, Kerry Emanuel, the meteorologist and hurricane specialist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was known as a cautious centrist on questions of global warming and hurricane ferocity.

Professor Emanuel asserted often that no firm link had been established between warming and the intensity and frequency of hurricanes.

But in August, two weeks before Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, Professor Emanuel wrote in the journal Nature that he had discovered statistical evidence that hurricanes were indeed affected by global warming. He linked the increased intensity of storms to the heating of the oceans.

"His paper has had a fantastic impact on the policy debate," said Stephen Schneider, a climatologist at Stanford. "Emanuel's this conservative, apolitical guy, and he's saying, 'Global warming is real.' "

On a recent visit to New York, Professor Emanuel, who is 50, said, "It's been quite a ride since the Nature article." He added, "But it's a really bad thing for a scientist to have an immovable, intractable position."

Q. Let's go back to late August. What were your feelings as you watched television and saw Hurricane Katrina heading toward New Orleans?

A. I'll go back to a few days before that. As Katrina was making up off the coast of Florida, it was already an interesting storm. Though she was weak, the prediction was she was going to hit Florida.

But when Katrina came off the west coast of Florida, there were new predictions taking it into the central gulf and then up toward New Orleans, and I became concerned.

Many people in my profession had been worried about New Orleans for a very long time. And we had always envisioned these worst-case scenarios, and this was beginning to look like one of those. And so I plotted out the position of the "loop current," which is this warm current of water in the Gulf of Mexico, and the forecast had the hurricane going right up the axis of this loop current.

I remember looking at that, and alarms went off. I had this terrible feeling of dread, which deepened when the hurricane was elevated to a Category 5. We all knew that the pumps that kept New Orleans dry wouldn't be able to handle more than about a Category 3.

My mother has an elderly friend in New Orleans, and I did something I never do. I sent her a message: "You ought to get out, now!" In retrospect, I will say that had Katrina been 30 miles further west, the death toll could have been much worse. New Orleans would have flooded more rapidly and to deeper levels.

Q. Because last year's hurricane season was so intense, many people declared: "Ah, ha! Global warming!" Were they right?

A. My answer is, Not so fast. That may have been a contributor. But the fact we had such a bad season was mostly a matter of chance. On the other hand, though the number of storms globally remained nearly constant, the frequency of Atlantic storms has been rising in concert with tropical ocean temperature, probably because of global warming.

There is no doubt that in the last 20 years, the earth has been warming up. And it's warming up much too fast to ascribe to any natural process we know about.

We still don't have a good grasp of how clouds and water vapor, the two big feedbacks in the climate system, will respond to global warming. What we are seeing is a modest increase in the intensity of hurricanes.

I predicted years ago that if you warmed the tropical oceans by a degree Centigrade, you should see something on the order of a 5 percent increase in the wind speed during hurricanes. We've seen a larger increase, more like 10 percent, for an ocean temperature increase of only one-half degree Centigrade.

Q. So what are the implications of increased ocean temperatures?

A. Not much for storms at the time of landfall. But if you look at the whole life of storms in large ocean basins, we are seeing changes. And even if that doesn't have an immediate effect, people ought to be concerned about this because it is a large change in a natural phenomenon.

Q. There are scientists who say of fossil fuel consumption and global warming, We may not have all the evidence yet, but we ought to be acting as if the worst could happen. Do you agree?

A. It's always struck me as odd that this country hasn't put far more resources into research on alternative energy. Europeans are. France has managed to go 85 percent nuclear in its electrical generation. And the Europeans have gotten together to fund a major nuclear fusion project. It almost offends my pride as a U.S. scientist that we've fallen down so badly in this competition.

Q. How did hurricanes become your specialty?

A. When I was a child, we lived in Florida for three years, and I went through of a couple of hurricanes and was very impressed by them. Later, at M.I.T., I was asked to teach a course in tropical meteorology, which included hurricanes.

As I started preparing, I realized I didn't understand what I'd been taught on the subject. As with many things, you think you understand something until you try to teach it. After some reading, I realized that the reigning theory had to be wrong.

This theory held that the main thing that drives a hurricane is just ingestion of enormous quantities of water vapor from the atmospheric environment. It made predictions that weren't true. So it became a very big intellectual challenge to me. The more I got into it, the more interesting it became.

Q. Given what you know about hurricanes, should we be building beachfront housing on the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts?

A. Disaster specialists will tell you that part of the increasing lethality of land-falling hurricanes isn't related to nature. A lot of it has to do with human activity. We're moving to the coasts in droves, like lemmings.

We're building waterfront structures there that aren't necessarily strong. We're taxing the infrastructure and paying a big price for doing that.

Q. Would you ever buy a house on the beach?

A. I'd love to! But if I could do that, I'd insist on paying for my risk. And I'd do what is now being called "the Fire Island option," which involves putting up flimsy houses that you don't mind losing to a storm. You don't insure them.

Q. Almost concurrent to Hurricane Katrina, you published a beautifully packaged book, "Divine Wind: The History and Science of Hurricanes." How did you feel about the timing of its publication?

A. Not terribly good. If one is just interested in sales, I suppose it was fortuitous. But I was trying to convey a sense of hurricanes as not just things of scientific interest, but as beautiful. A leopard is a very beautiful animal. But if you took it out of its cage, it would go for your jugular. Anyone can understand that neither a leopard nor a hurricane is a willful killer.

Bulgaroctonus

This is a link to an essay about the above topic, by Kerry Emanuel. I don't know if it is the same as the piece that appeared in Nature some time ago, but it has interesting things. It also has a bibliography which I intend to investigate.

Link: http://wind.mit.edu/~emanuel/anthro2.htm

Shek

Emanuel's research doesn't go back prior to 1949. I understand his concern that proper data didn't exist prior, but that means that it doesn't account fully for the cyclical nature of the ocean currents. Therefore, his conclusions are not very robust and can be quite misleading if this is not taken into account.

__________________
"So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand." Thucydides 1.20.3