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Author Topic: Egypt and the world and Libya - Now without Ukraine!  (Read 373136 times)

Sir Pseudonymous

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Re: Egypt and the world
« Reply #1020 on: February 23, 2011, 03:51:41 pm »

Let me guess: you also think the public education system is terrible,
Yes. It is mismanaged, underfunded, and assigned random, ever changing goals with only the vaguest of directions.
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and we have too many mediocre teachers?
No. They are overworked and underfunded, and assigned constantly changing goals with little instruction on how to accomplish them. Managing to operate at all in such an environment is a sign of at least general competence and an admirable degree of resolve and patience.

Surely you must brilliant enough that you could do much more good doing something other than trying to teach children math you'd probably mastered before you were even their age? People who are skilled in higher math are far fewer and farther between than people who can teach basic math; even doing something that didn't directly help others you'd probably have enough disposable income to fund several teachers able to teach basic math, while having a higher standard of living yourself to boot.

Are you... actually trying to tell Vector that, hey, those kids aren't as smart as you and are never going to be, so there's much better things you can do with your time than trying to teach them math skills?  After all that chestthumping not ten posts ago about how the best thing to do for the world is spread a real education to impoverished areas?  Seriously, dude, what the Hell is your problem?
No. I'm saying that someone with such high qualifications can do much greater things. You don't need to be able to do calculus to teach a child arithmetic, and there are far more people able to teach the latter than do the former.

Heaven forbid that people should do what they want to do. They should only do tasks fitting their skill sets.
Yes, advising someone that they are capable of doing much more good than something they announced they were thinking about doing because they wanted to do good is totally not letting them do what they want.
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I'm all for eating the heart of your enemies to gain their courage though.

DJ

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Re: Egypt and the world
« Reply #1021 on: February 23, 2011, 03:54:31 pm »

I still don't understand where you got a yardstick for good deeds. "More good" is a highly subjective term, and some people may disagree with your particular view. Why should they abandon their own opinions in favour of yours?
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Nadaka

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Re: Egypt and the world
« Reply #1022 on: February 23, 2011, 04:00:26 pm »

Besides that, teaching calculus and other high level skills to kids in the third world is likely to produce a much greater effect than using or even teaching calculus in the US.
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Sir Pseudonymous

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Re: Egypt and the world
« Reply #1023 on: February 23, 2011, 04:04:04 pm »

Schizophrenic ravings about google and Egypt, from Russia and Glenn Beck.

Quote from: Ars Technica
On his own show, Beck later recommended that his viewers not use Google. "May I recommend, if you’re doing your own homework, don’t do a Google search. Seems to me that Google is pretty deeply in bed with the government. Maybe this is explaining why Google is being kicked out of all the other countries? Are they just a shill now for the United States government? Who is [Google exec] Jared Cohen? Is he private citizen or government operative? And isn’t this the second Google guy we’ve found [after Wael Ghonim]? This is the second Google executive now being exposed as an instigator of a revolution. Are you comfortable with the government partnering covertly with media organizations, search engines, and social networking so they can bring change that the Washington elites have designed?"

I still don't understand where you got a yardstick for good deeds. "More good" is a highly subjective term, and some people may disagree with your particular view. Why should they abandon their own opinions in favour of yours?
"More" as in "a greater deal of." Someone proficient with arithmetic can teach a few dozen children arithmetic. Someone with skill in higher math can provide much more valuable labor, filling a position that is much harder to fill.
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I'm all for eating the heart of your enemies to gain their courage though.

DJ

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Re: Egypt and the world
« Reply #1024 on: February 23, 2011, 04:13:07 pm »

So all good is worth equally? Holding a door open for someone is equivalent to donating a kidney? I'm sure you'll say no, in which case please provide me with an objective way to measure value of any individual good deed.
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andrea

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Re: Egypt and the world
« Reply #1025 on: February 23, 2011, 04:17:40 pm »

About European countries worrying about immigration should Qaddafi( this spelling seems popular) fall, is that deals were made with him to stop migrants from crossing Mediterranean. I don't know how many parties are involved, but Italy surely is. We even gave Lybia some ships to help patrolling the coast...

basically, Lybia was doing the dirty job for Europe, stopping people from crossing the sea.

Sir Pseudonymous

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Re: Egypt and the world
« Reply #1026 on: February 23, 2011, 04:19:39 pm »

So all good is worth equally? Holding a door open for someone is equivalent to donating a kidney? I'm sure you'll say no, in which case please provide me with an objective way to measure value of any individual good deed.
Which helps more people, holding a door for someone, or inventing automatic doors?
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I'm all for eating the heart of your enemies to gain their courage though.

DJ

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Re: Egypt and the world
« Reply #1027 on: February 23, 2011, 04:22:43 pm »

Ah, so feeding a starving person is the exact same thing as giving a new shirt to a hobo?
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Urist, President mandates the Dwarven Bill of Rights.

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Ah, the Magma Carta...

Aqizzar

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Re: Egypt and the world
« Reply #1028 on: February 23, 2011, 04:24:16 pm »

Hey, I have an idea.  Pseudo, take your utilitarianism malarkey to another thread, so we can get back to talking about Middle Eastern revolutions.

So, how 'bout that Libya?
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Lovechild

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Re: Egypt and the world
« Reply #1029 on: February 23, 2011, 04:25:05 pm »

About European countries worrying about immigration should Qaddafi( this spelling seems popular) fall, is that deals were made with him to stop migrants from crossing Mediterranean. I don't know how many parties are involved, but Italy surely is. We even gave Lybia some ships to help patrolling the coast...

basically, Lybia was doing the dirty job for Europe, stopping people from crossing the sea.

Yeah, it'll look bad if Italy has to start shooting the migrants themselves. Of course, that didn't stop Greece...
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Re: Egypt and the world
« Reply #1030 on: February 23, 2011, 04:27:16 pm »

So all good is worth equally? Holding a door open for someone is equivalent to donating a kidney? I'm sure you'll say no, in which case please provide me with an objective way to measure value of any individual good deed.
Which helps more people, holding a door for someone, or inventing automatic doors?

When someone is standing there in front of the door, you don't rush off and start designing a door-opening mechanism for them. In the same way, it is better to provide clean water and other aid to a community immediately than to put the same amount of money into local aid and waiting for it to "trickle down" to this distant village.

Anyway, I agree with Aquzzar. On that note, what really disturbs me is the mercenaries firing at unarmed civilians from rooftops.
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RedKing

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Re: Egypt and the world
« Reply #1031 on: February 23, 2011, 04:39:41 pm »

Schizophrenic ravings about google and Egypt, from Russia and Glenn Beck.

Quote from: Ars Technica
On his own show, Beck later recommended that his viewers not use Google. "May I recommend, if you’re doing your own homework, don’t do a Google search. Seems to me that Google is pretty deeply in bed with the government. Maybe this is explaining why Google is being kicked out of all the other countries? Are they just a shill now for the United States government? Who is [Google exec] Jared Cohen? Is he private citizen or government operative? And isn’t this the second Google guy we’ve found [after Wael Ghonim]? This is the second Google executive now being exposed as an instigator of a revolution. Are you comfortable with the government partnering covertly with media organizations, search engines, and social networking so they can bring change that the Washington elites have designed?"

I still don't understand where you got a yardstick for good deeds. "More good" is a highly subjective term, and some people may disagree with your particular view. Why should they abandon their own opinions in favour of yours?
"More" as in "a greater deal of." Someone proficient with arithmetic can teach a few dozen children arithmetic. Someone with skill in higher math can provide much more valuable labor, filling a position that is much harder to fill.

This should really be broken out into a seperate thread on philanthropy (or whatever the hell you're trying to argue), but let me just point out that you're still essentially arguing for mediocre teachers. Personally, I would hope that my child's arithmetic teacher is capable of more than just basic arithmetic. That a sixth-grade science teacher has more than a high school-level grasp of science.


Seriously, your argument is devolving into something out of Atlas Shrugged, where the "superior individual" is the pinnacle of all that is good and worthy, but "the masses" are considered irredeemable fodder and unworthy of individual attention.



And yeah....so, Libya! (And other countries which continue to simmer). The King of Bahrain left today to "visit" Saudi Arabia, a day after a protest that saw 20% of the national population turn out and two days before another planned protest. Wonder if he might decided to extend that vacation....

Oh, and hey...the Washington Post finally picked up on the same historical analogy that I've been using for a month. I feel so hip.
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SalmonGod

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Re: Egypt and the world
« Reply #1032 on: February 23, 2011, 04:59:23 pm »

Just one comment on the philanthropy discussion.  I personally believe that our egocentric worldviews and selfish tendencies are a root source of many of the world's problems.  Most of our problems come from people's treatment of one another based on the justification that they must look out for them and their own first, even at the cost of others.  Thus we create a competitive rather than cooperative atmosphere, where doing harm becomes necessary for survival.  I think that dedicating ourselves to the betterment of all people equally, beginning with those facing the largest scale and most desperate situations especially as caused by our competitive culture, is the deepest possible approach to uprooting this fundamental human problem.

In other words, most of our problems come from a widespread lack of compassion, thus actively cultivating compassion is the most pragmatic possible approach to solving the world's problems, even if the actions involved in that process of cultivation when studied individually are not pragmatically effective.
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Sir Pseudonymous

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Re: Egypt and the world
« Reply #1033 on: February 23, 2011, 05:12:40 pm »

So all good is worth equally? Holding a door open for someone is equivalent to donating a kidney? I'm sure you'll say no, in which case please provide me with an objective way to measure value of any individual good deed.
Which helps more people, holding a door for someone, or inventing automatic doors?

When someone is standing there in front of the door, you don't rush off and start designing a door-opening mechanism for them. In the same way, it is better to provide clean water and other aid to a community immediately than to put the same amount of money into local aid and waiting for it to "trickle down" to this distant village.
You don't fly halfway across the world to open a door, either.

And I never said helping people here would help people on the other side of the world. That's basically the opposite of what I'm saying. Helping the poorest people here will by extension help everyone here, by increasing the skilled workforce, increasing the consumer market, and decreasing the number of individuals in such desperate straits as to turn to violent crime for money, in addition to the general benefit of improving the lot of people who deserve better then they have, and need only a little push to reach it. Go to the other side of the world and the same efforts are nothing more than pissing into the ocean. Educate some children, great, too bad there are no jobs there that require those skills, so they just end up farmers anyways. Give them clean drinking water, great, too bad their food's tainted too. Give them safe food, great, too bad those militants over there came and shot them all to take it for themselves...

Just one comment on the philanthropy discussion.  I personally believe that our egocentric worldviews and selfish tendencies are a root source of many of the world's problems.  Most of our problems come from people's treatment of one another based on the justification that they must look out for them and their own first, even at the cost of others.  Thus we create a competitive rather than cooperative atmosphere, where doing harm becomes necessary for survival.  I think that dedicating ourselves to the betterment of all people equally, beginning with those facing the largest scale and most desperate situations especially as caused by our competitive culture, is the deepest possible approach to uprooting this fundamental human problem.

In other words, most of our problems come from a widespread lack of compassion, thus actively cultivating compassion is the most pragmatic possible approach to solving the world's problems, even if the actions involved in that process of cultivation when studied individually are not pragmatically effective.
Note that we teach people to share, and help others, and to be all nice and benevolent, all through their childhoods. It doesn't take in enough of them, and in many of those it does it gets beaten out of them by those it doesn't take in. Eventually most people end up with a sort of jaded benevolence at best, when they're not the sort to actively seek to better only themselves. I step a hell of a lot further than most when I say it's a government's obligation to help all of its people, not just the wealthy fucks bribing congressmen. One must pick one's battles, and helping those whose wellbeing has an impact on yours, however indirect, and who can be helped comes before trying to help people on the other side of the world. Ultimately, we should all be united under one flag, such that those people on the other side of the world are our people too, and thus we become obligated to help them, but that is a very long way off.
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I'm all for eating the heart of your enemies to gain their courage though.

Aqizzar

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Re: Egypt and the world
« Reply #1034 on: February 23, 2011, 05:18:43 pm »

When even you are saying, "This should really be in its own thread," maybe it's time to stop responding and do that.
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