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Thread: Torture versus collateral damage; the bigger evil?

  1. #81
    Council Member Backwards Observer's Avatar
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    Default that is the question

    Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
    why have they lost their moral foundation?
    Don't ask me. I just work here.

    In sum, the study found, power doesn’t corrupt; it heightens pre-existing ethical tendencies. Which brings to mind another maxim, from Abraham Lincoln: “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”

    Why Power Corrupts. - Smithsonian - Oct, 2012.

  2. #82
    Council Member carl's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by motorfirebox View Post
    Really? You understood "the perception that if you pool enough dubious loans together they somehow cease to be dubious" to be about government establishing perverse incentives? Because, wow. That's not at all what that phrase means.
    I did understand. Though I had to read it real slow and then put my thinking cap on and cogitate hard before I got it. Because, wow, if government provides perverse incentives and subsidizes moral hazard, it may tend to lead to dubious groupthink.

    Quote Originally Posted by motorfirebox View Post
    Yeah, see, you can say you understand "stuff", but when you're flatly ignorant of the role the ratings companies played? That indicates that you actually don't understand stuff.
    I already said I understood the offsides rule in soccer/football. That is stuff, I think.

    Anyway, I do understand that because ratings companies were paid by financial institutions to rate them and the investments they offered there was an inherent conflict of interest. That was not a good thing. See, not so ignorant, at least not completely, totally, blindingly, maddeningly ignorant.

    Quote Originally Posted by motorfirebox View Post
    Regardless, that's twice you've shifted goalposts in a single page, which is more crap than I'm willing to deal with.
    I have a question. How come when I wrote #### as part of a quote in post 77 it came out ####, but when you write crap, it comes out crap? I don't understand that.
    Last edited by carl; 01-03-2013 at 04:31 AM.
    "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene

  3. #83
    Council Member carl's Avatar
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    Backwards Observer:

    You provide good links.

    That one says more or less that the good stay good and the bad stay bad. Our elites, to me, seem to be trending bad. I don't know why either. Maybe it has something to do with the paramount importance of being nice. That may sound paradoxical but in order maintain the right (thank you RCMP), you have to say no at times, which isn't nice.

    I don't know, I am still trying to puzzle this out.
    "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene

  4. #84
    Council Member Dayuhan's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
    Hell yea. Sometimes when people act upon opinions that differ from mine, damn right they lack moral courage or moral foundation. If an officer messes with a prisoner and another officer doesn't say anything because he want to get along, he lacks moral courage. When somebody says torture is ok if, if, if...he lack moral foundation altogether. So yea, at times.
    I would suggest that matters of economic policy may not be one of those times.

    Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
    I have a question. How come when I wrote #### as part of a quote in post 77 it came out ####, but when you write crap, it comes out crap? I don't understand that.
    Try $#!t. It's comprehensible and passes. Or "scheisse", "merde", or the translation of your choice
    “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”

    H.L. Mencken

  5. #85
    Council Member carl's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dayuhan View Post
    Try $#!t. It's comprehensible and passes. Or "scheisse", "merde", or the translation of your choice
    $#!t you're right! It works!

    (Your response made me laugh.)
    Last edited by carl; 01-03-2013 at 05:19 AM.
    "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene

  6. #86
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    Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
    I did understand. Though I had to read it real slow and then put my thinking cap on and cogitate hard before I got it. Because, wow, if government provides perverse incentives and subsidizes moral hazard, it may tend to lead to dubious groupthink.
    Wow. Just... wow.

    Wow.

  7. #87
    Council Member carl's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by motorfirebox View Post
    Wow. Just... wow.

    Wow.
    Yep. That's what they all say.

    (stage direction: that is to be said in a drawling Clint Walker sort of way. Like when he said to Kim Novak in a movie "Just because I talk slow don't mean I'm peculiar.")

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOiqicU5-tk
    Last edited by carl; 01-03-2013 at 05:35 AM.
    "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene

  8. #88
    Council Member Surferbeetle's Avatar
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    Carl,

    As long as we are considering things, 'a man's character is his fate' is attributed to Heraclitus...

    ...PBS Frontline always has some interesting programs:

    The Crash: Unraveling the 1998 Global Crisis, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/crash/

    Money, Power, & Wallstreet, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...r-wall-street/

    ...and the Open Secrets: Money in Politics website is always interesting, http://www.opensecrets.org
    Sapere Aude

  9. #89
    Council Member carl's Avatar
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    Surferbeetle:

    That Open Secrets site had an interesting quote by an airline captain. I'm sure he still has his job. You can do a lot as a captain, sometimes it's sort of fun.
    "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene

  10. #90
    Council Member Backwards Observer's Avatar
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    Default i got yer puzzle right here

    Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
    Backwards Observer: You provide good links.
    Better nip this in the bud.

    Dorakyura Tsū: Noroi no Fūin

    Simon thought he had destroyed him - but Count Dracula may have the last laugh. Castlevania is facing disaster, and Simon is turning into a vampire. Unless Simon can defeat Dracula once and for all, Castlevania is doomed.
    Dorakyura Tsū: Noroi no Fūin
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  11. #91
    Council Member carl's Avatar
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    Backwards Observer:

    When did this turn into improv night?

    I'm still laughing at that. Castlevania is doomed!
    Last edited by carl; 01-03-2013 at 05:37 AM.
    "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene

  12. #92
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    Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
    Yep. That's what they all say.

    (stage direction: that is to be said in a drawling Clint Walker sort of way. Like when he said to the dance hall girl in a movie "Just because I talk slow don't mean I'm peculiar.")

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOiqicU5-tk
    Mm. I'm posting this so that I'll remember to not engage with you in the future: you are, without a doubt, the least intellectually honest person I've ever tried to have a discussion with. If you put half as much effort into being smart as you do into trying to be clever, you wouldn't have to resort to shifting the discourse every time someone raises a solid point against your position. There are good, reasonable, convincing arguments against the arguments I'm putting forward--I know this, because other people have made them. You haven't. You've obfuscated, you've avoided, you've deliberately misunderstood, but you haven't debated with anything approaching honesty. It's a tiresome habit that you really ought to work yourself away from.

  13. #93
    Council Member carl's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by motorfirebox View Post
    Mm. I'm posting this so that I'll remember to not engage with you in the future: you are, without a doubt, the least intellectually honest person I've ever tried to have a discussion with. If you put half as much effort into being smart as you do into trying to be clever, you wouldn't have to resort to shifting the discourse every time someone raises a solid point against your position. There are good, reasonable, convincing arguments against the arguments I'm putting forward--I know this, because other people have made them. You haven't. You've obfuscated, you've avoided, you've deliberately misunderstood, but you haven't debated with anything approaching honesty. It's a tiresome habit that you really ought to work yourself away from.
    We all have our faults. But at least my mother liked me.

    Or alternatively- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6cxNR9ML8k
    Last edited by carl; 01-03-2013 at 05:44 AM.
    "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene

  14. #94
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dayuhan View Post
    I think Entropy effectively addressed the OP's original question: torture is intentional, collateral damage is accidental. Apples and oranges.

    The point of thread diversion arrived here, as far as I can tell:



    That sparked a digression into the impact of tax rates on government revenues.

    Not that it's any less a digression, but I must say I think it would be a good idea to have entry into a war accompanied by a mandatory war tax, partly because that would help pay for a war, but far more because it would make politicians think twice, or thee or four times, before they decide to go to war.

    The idea that moral degradation or a lack of moral courage could result in the use of torture may have merit. It's also true, though, that the idea of "moral courage" can also be twisted into a conviction that the morally courageous know what is right and must do what is right no matter where that leads. People who know they are right are a good deal scarier to me than people who accept that they might be wrong, or at least not completely right, even though doubt may in some circles appear to signify a lack of moral courage.

    I don't know that moral courage or moral degradation have anything to do with the current economic problems.
    Actually Carl responded promptly to my post and addressed the issue I was addressing regarding morals, but then he had to add a p.s. and Fuchs couldn't let go and several posts later we get torture

    I think your point about moral degradation having nothing to do with our current economic problems is about as far from reality as one can drift and not disappear into a black hole. It certainly wasn't the sole factor, but it definitely contributed to it.

    One can argue the morality associated with torture, and while I may be wrong, I generally assumed our intelligence agencies (not the military) always were prepared to use coercive interrogation methods in extreme cases if they truly believed it was the only method to prevent an atrocity. That sure as hell doesn't mean it should have been approved as general policy, or to make matters worse then out sourcing it to incompetent contractors who had no expertise in conducting interrogation.

  15. #95
    Council Member carl's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bill Moore View Post
    One can argue the morality associated with torture, and while I may be wrong, I generally assumed our intelligence agencies (not the military) always were prepared to use coercive interrogation methods in extreme cases if they truly believed it was the only method to prevent an atrocity. That sure as hell doesn't mean it should have been approved as general policy, or to make matters worse then out sourcing it to incompetent contractors who had no expertise in conducting interrogation.
    If it is done by intel agencies doesn't that make it a de-facto approved policy?
    Last edited by carl; 01-03-2013 at 05:59 AM.
    "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene

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    There is a big difference between extremely limited (assuming it ever happened prior to the Bush administration) exceptions to policy that are not overtly advertised as a change in policy by an administration.

    We're discussing the possibility for an exception to policy, not a change to policy, and keeping it on the low. I still agree it is a method the weak and twisted, but I still allow for a potential exception.

  17. #97
    Council Member Kiwigrunt's Avatar
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    New title:

    Torture versus taxation; the bigger evil?

    That should make for a short thread.

    - - - - - - -

    Torture is intentional, collateral damage is accidental.
    The first part seems obvious. But I’m not sure that the intentionality of the act is what makes it intrinsically immoral. Going to war in the sandbox was also intentional, and so is the death penalty.

    Collateral damage may be unintended, but I should think that in many cases it is clearly possible and probable. So it would seem an accepted side effect to the intentional action.
    Is the acceptability contingent on the (un)predictability of its scope? Does that provide a smoke screen over the morality of it?
    Craphappencidental seems to hover somewhere between accidental and intentional.
    Nothing that results in human progress is achieved with unanimous consent. (Christopher Columbus)

    All great truth passes through three stages: first it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
    (Arthur Schopenhauer)

    ONWARD

  18. #98
    Council Member carl's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bill Moore View Post
    We're discussing the possibility for an exception to policy, not a change to policy, and keeping it on the low. I still agree it is a method the weak and twisted, but I still allow for a potential exception.
    That isn't an exception to policy. It is still a policy to torture. If we torture but only sometimes and keep it quiet, we still torture. That is just an attempt to convince ourselves we aren't weak and twisted
    "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene

  19. #99
    Council Member Fuchs's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
    In the long run free is better even with the ups and downs. Creative destruction and all that.
    You're also talking about the "too big to fail" sector here...

    Seriously, there's not much creative destruction any more in the U.S. economy or in European economies. Cassette tapes got pushed aside by CDs and there are some other anecdotes, but the big creative destruction moves don't happen because the existing winners are entrenched and have much influence on politicians and media. They can also pervert the patent and other copyright laws to their ends, by using them to kill off true innovators with fraudulent challenges.
    It's also very difficult to innovate and destroy something old in a world where technology has advanced so much that tech wizards in garages simply don't cut it any more. You need teams of dozens of people even for smallish development enterprises. There aren't many Dysons around.

  20. #100
    Council Member carl's Avatar
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    Fuchs:

    Sadly I must agree. Little that is established is allowed to fail, especially in the financial world. We made noises about not letting things be to big to fail but the banking world is more concentrated than ever. I read an article in the Atlantic (that used to be a good magazine until it went straight party line about two years ago) years ago that said if the IMF was handling the US crisis in 2008, all those big banks would have been nationalized, broken up and sold. But of course it wasn't because the too many of the superzips would have been hurt. As you say, the existing winners protecting themselves.

    http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...t-coup/307364/
    "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene

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